In classic fashion. [It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan]
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.
A classical near-origin story told across time, Jo Kaplan's It Will Just Be Us took a while for me to wrap my head around. Told from a singular POV, the story is less horror and more of a supernatural crime thriller than anything. Instead of a discovery of haunting, the supernatural is baseline. The protagonist, Sam, and her family have for generations lived in a house that would drive (and has driven) others mad. Over Sam's day-to-day examinations of her childhood, familial traumas and histories, glimpses afforded through the strange mechanics of her haunted ancestral home, a plot is slowly pieced together.
What drew me in slowly were the family dynamics and how varying degrees of emotional abuse and neglect played out in relationships, shaping personality and dictating goals. As I read I saw similarities to The Haunting of Hill House (I only saw the Netflix series), also seeing how easily the novel could be adapted. Questions were posed in the context of how trauma shapes and/or determines outcomes and contexts. There are some gimmicky tropes, the strange swamp, the connected Native Americans, the links to African slaves, and they weren't as explored as they could have been. But then the tone shifted and added another dimension, the domestic terror of men. I won't say more lest I spoil the book for any reader, but it got to the point where I was deeply invested, rooting against characters and cheering for their comeuppance.
Surprising twists were few as most reveals were foreshadowed or relatively obvious, but nothing was predictable enough to turn me off. The biggest thing against this is the question of whether this should be considered as belonging to the horror genre. I'd argue no but I've often said people horror, the kind of realistic horrors one person inflicts on another, is the worst - gore does not compare - so I suppose it is. Before I was hooked, and it was earlier on that I was, this was leaning towards 3 stars, but I feel most comfortable, post-hook and having finished, saying this was a 4 star book.
It Will Just Be Us is set for publication September 2020.
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