I really should examine the psychology behind why I, a childless cat mom, keep choosing to read mom-noir. I’ve read Zoje Stage’s Baby Teeth, Ashley Audrain’s The Push, and now Helena Echlin’s Clever Little Thing, all novels about mothers who think there is something disturbingly wrong with their daughters (it’s always the daughters). And I keep reading these books even though I know they are not going to be great, and Clever Little Thing is the worst of the three.

Clever Little Thing is about an English woman named Charlotte who is married to a rich American. She and her husband have relocated their family to England. He works long hours at a start-up that makes packing foam out of mushrooms or something. She has recently left her job as an etiquette blogger to focus full time on being a mom as she is pregnant with baby number two.

Charlotte has an eight-year-old daughter named Stella who is a “clever little thing”. Stella is exceptionally bright, with a vocabulary that is better than most adults. She reads books about bird flight being the basis of aviation and is curious enough about anatomy that she wants to dissect dead birds. But Stella is also reserved, sensitive to certain sounds and has tantrums that Charlotte calls “freak-out mode”. Stella displays signs of being on the autism spectrum, but Charlotte refuses to get Stella tested because of her own mistrust of medical professionals.

When Clever Little Things begins, Charlotte has just learned that Stella’s babysitter, Blanka, has died from an apparent suicide. Charlotte is shocked by Blanka’s death, but then she notices that Stella has adopted Blanka’s docile personality and slow gait and has started speaking the same phrases that Blanka used to say. Charlotte becomes convinced that Stella is being possessed by Blanka’s spirit and that Blanka has returned to punish Charlotte for not caring for her while she was alive.

Charlotte begins to unravel as she points out the “unnatural” changes to Stella’s behaviour and no one, including her husband, seems convinced there is anything unusual going on. Is Charlotte being gaslit by her husband, by Stella’s teacher, by Stella’s doctor? Or is the reader being gaslit by Charlotte, the only person who spends enough time with Stella to know if Stella actual is as clever as Charlotte says she is? Is Stella actually possessed by Blanka? Or is Stella just mimicking Blanka’s behaviour because she does not know how to process her grief over losing Blanka?

Despite my reservations, I decided to read Clever Little Thing because I liked the supernatural element of the story. But in the end, it turned into a banal domestic drama, and I hate using the word banal because in real life countless women have to deal with what Charlotte’s ends up dealing with, but it has been done a million times before in fiction. So yes, this book is disappointing, and I am kicking myself for buying it. At least it was 40% off.