It Will Just Be Us
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Average rating4.8
A terrifying new gothic horror novel about two sisters and a haunted house that never sleeps, perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle. They say there's a door in Wakefield that never opens... Sam Wakefield's ancestral home, a decaying mansion built on the edge of a swamp, isn't a place for children. Its labyrinthine halls, built by her mad ancestors, are filled with echoes of the past: ghosts and memories knotted together as one. In the presence of phantoms, it's all Sam can do to disentangle past from present in her daily life. But when her pregnant sister Elizabeth moves in after a fight with her husband, something in the house shifts. Already navigating her tumultuous relationship with Elizabeth, Sam is even more unsettled by the appearance of a new ghost: a faceless boy who commits disturbing acts--threatening animals, terrorizing other children, and following Sam into the depths of the house wielding a knife. When it becomes clear the boy is connected to a locked, forgotten room, one which is never entered, Sam realizes this ghost is not like the others. This boy brings doom... As Elizabeth's due date approaches, Sam must unravel the mysteries of Wakefield before her sister brings new life into a house marked by death. But as the faceless boy grows stronger, Sam will learn that some doors should stay closed--and some secrets are safer locked away forever.
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Wow. So there is A LOT going on here. In fact, there was so much, I could no longer listen to the audio version of this and switched to the print (it was too hard to follow when characters that were not there a second ago pop up out of nowhere).
We have an actual haunted house, where memories of past residents are wandering around rooms. The house is constantly moving doors, too, a la the Winchester Mansion. And of course, there is a locked room that no one has the key too. I mean, of course.
We have an unreliable narrator, townsfolk who hate the weird Wakefield family, a swamp that never spits out the bones of those it swallows, a swamp witch, escaped slaves, and a wicked case of domestic abuse. I may have missed it, why is the mom no longer a nurse? Was she Nurse Ratched?
On top of this, the narrator's pregnant sister is home and may just be about to give birth to the second cousin to the anti-Christ.
Yup. Kaplan throws all of these balls in the air and manages to pull off a freaking awesome novel. I was hooked, literally could not turn the pages fast enough. THIS is want I want when I say I want a haunted house story. I can't believe more people are not talking about this book and I can't believe no one has compared it to We Have Always Lived in the Castle yet. Well, there. I just did.
It loses a star for a magical negro trope rescue that happens out in the swamp. The witch can't have her own face? It had to be Clementine to save Julian?
Also, I'm not crazy about the title. It doesn't fit the text, but I don't rate books on their titles or covers.
