In this lyrical horror rooted in Japanese myth, two people centuries apart—Lee Turner in 2026 and Sen, a samurai in 1877—are linked by a house hidden beneath sword ferns and a door between worlds. As memories fracture and realities bleed together, one story is a ghost and the other a lie, and both uncover a terrible thing that should have stayed buried.
My Review
Thank you to Hanover Square Press/HTP Books for the ARC!
I went into Japanese Gothic knowing it would be strange, but I was still wildly unprepared for just how unhinged and absorbing it would be. The story flips between Lee in 2026, fleeing New York after killing his roommate under circumstances he cannot fully remember, and Sen in 1877, a young samurai in exile whose father returns from war wearing the wrong face and an even wronger spirit. Both timelines orbit the same eerie house hidden beneath sword ferns in Japan, a place where windows change, animals refuse to tread, and a woman with a blade appears when night falls. I do not usually reach for horror, yet this slower burn pulled me in completely, letting the atmosphere sink into my bones until I could practically smell the damp earth and old wood.
He wanted to hopelessly entangle her soul with his until they were one and the same, to follow her to the bottom of the ocean, to rot beside her when death devoured them both.
That said, this book absolutely scrambled my brain. The constant time jumps, dreamlike sequences, and fractured memories made it hard to tell what actually happened and what lived only inside Lee or Sen’s head. I was frequently lost, sometimes frustrated, and more than once had to pause just to recalibrate. Still, there was something compelling about that confusion. Baker leans hard into the idea of the unreliable narrator, repeating events in slightly altered forms and forcing you to question every version of the truth. Lee’s grief over his mother’s disappearance and his spiraling addictions mirror Sen’s desperate need for her father’s approval, even as her loyalty pushes her toward horrifying choices. The disorientation feels deliberate, unsettling, and oddly effective.
Was I so wrong to treasure humans? she wondered. Will they always leave me alone in the dark? She swore to never care for humans again, to never lend them her heart, never try to save them from themselves. But still, she tasted their tears like the salt of the sea, felt the ache of their pain deep in her bones, cried for them as she wished someone would cry for her, even once. She did not know if she would ever find the love that humans held for only each other, but she would continue searching until the end of time.
By the time I finished, I just sat there staring at the wall, trying to process what I had read. Bizarre, phantasmagorical, and deeply unsettling, this story left me both bewildered and satisfied. My only real hesitation from giving it five stars was the ending, which wrapped things up quickly and did not land with the same emotional weight as the journey getting there.
Maybe the bridge between life and death isn’t a bridge at all. Maybe it’s more like an ocean. You’re under the water
Even so, I cannot stop thinking about it. If you are in the mood for something eerie, unconventional, and willing to mess with your sense of reality, Kylie Lee Baker delivers something truly memorable.
