BOOK REVIEW | JAPANESE GOTHIC | KYLIE LEE BAKER

 

BOOK REVIEW | JAPANESE GOTHIC | KYLIE LEE BAKER

ABOUT THE BOOK

2026

Lee can't remember exactly where he hid the body, but he can remember the blood. Hiding out at his father's centuries-old home in Japan, Lee knows something is wrong with him, and he knows it has something to do with his mother's disappearance almost a decade ago.

1877

A female samurai, Sen, stalks the borders of her home to protect her family from slaughter after the abolition of the samurai class. She's not sure how they'll ever survive, not without her father, who has returned from war with a different soul behind his eyes.

When Lee and Sen find one another through a door between their worlds, they're both looking for answers. But what they find in the creaking old house they share is beyond what either of them could imagine…

REVIEW

Billed as one of New York Times’s most anticipated books of the year, and personally, this was one of mine too, especially after reading the brilliant Bateater and other names for Cora Zheng. However, things were not meant to be.

Japanese Gothic tells the story of Lee, a young man who for some reason has killed his roommate. We do not know the circumstances or if this was in fact a true event as Lee spends most of his days in a substance fuelled haze due to the sedatives he takes to dull his feelings after the death of his mother many years before. In order to avoid detection he has joined his father in Japan who has moved there with his newest partner Hina.

Running parallel to this is the story of Sen, a young girl in 1877 on the brink of the change from feudal Japan to the Imperial state it was to become. Ten years before, her father had joined the Samuri revolution to keep the old ways. But as always with things that change, the machine moves regardless and the revolution was brutally crushed. Now a broken shadow of himself, he and the family reside in the house that Lee lives in separated by time and a (sliding) door. 

Building slowly, the horror becomes apparent as the story unfolds. The book deals with a number of themes, generational trauma, familial trauma, and a host of other things.

Unfortunately this book did not work for me at all. It’s a slow burn and the horror takes its time to unfold. This is not something that I mind. I don’t need the immediacy of Baker’s previous novel, but what was missing for me was that emotional hook, that niggle that makes the reader want to know what is going to happen next. It was that mysterious component that was missing. In fact, I found myself having to mentally muster myself to pick up the book, and that is never a good sign. In the end it became more of a chore rather than a joy, which was ultimately a bit of a disappointment.

There are lots of good things in this book. Baker’s prose is beautiful. The mix of Japanese folklore and the blurring of the timeline between the two characters etc were great, but for me, that spark was just not there.

I am sure that lots of people will enjoy this book, and indeed it has already gained plenty of traction with lots of reviewers, but for me, it’s a hard pass.