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findingmontauk1 's review for:
It Will Just Be Us
by Jo Kaplan
It Will Just Be Us is a gothic story focusing on a creepy house, Wakefield Manor, and a mother and her two daughters who live there. One daughter, Elizabeth, had to return to the house after domestic dispute and she's pregnant. The other daughter, Sam, is now remembering that their house is not quite so normal. It can show you things... memories. "It is a house haunted by memory; it digests us, all of us, and spits us out again at random." Wakefield Manor is creepy enough as it is near a swamp with its own dastardly legend attached to it. Wakefield Manor has some similarities with Winchester House. Rooms appear and corridors disappear. Memories emerge at any given time as... hallucinations? Real events? It's all shrouded in mystery. Sam starts seeing a future memory... a faceless boy capable of horrible and creepy things. And he calls her.... Auntie. *gasp*
So the second half of this book was really good. It was quite intoxicating and unputdownable. We got to see more of the faceless boy, see his actions, and he got to freak us out just like he was freaking out our main character, Sam. The language is more intentional and the tone just has a creepier feel to it than the beginning. The first half of the book, however, was extremely wordy and overly descriptive for my taste. There were just too many atmospheric vibes going on. Sometimes a whole sentence was used to say something that could be boiled down to one or two words. Building the house up as a character and setting the stage for the final act is almost always a slow burn in a gothic story, but it was just a little too much for me in this one. I know so many of my friends who loooooove the atmospheric buildup, so I am sure there will be many who absolutely adore the first half of this book!
In the end, however, I do recommend this for fans of ghost stories, haunted houses, and gothic literature. It checks off all the boxes you would expect. The second half and ending, however, definitely saved me from rating this lower because I just did not connect with it up front. 3.5 stars!
So the second half of this book was really good. It was quite intoxicating and unputdownable. We got to see more of the faceless boy, see his actions, and he got to freak us out just like he was freaking out our main character, Sam. The language is more intentional and the tone just has a creepier feel to it than the beginning. The first half of the book, however, was extremely wordy and overly descriptive for my taste. There were just too many atmospheric vibes going on. Sometimes a whole sentence was used to say something that could be boiled down to one or two words. Building the house up as a character and setting the stage for the final act is almost always a slow burn in a gothic story, but it was just a little too much for me in this one. I know so many of my friends who loooooove the atmospheric buildup, so I am sure there will be many who absolutely adore the first half of this book!
In the end, however, I do recommend this for fans of ghost stories, haunted houses, and gothic literature. It checks off all the boxes you would expect. The second half and ending, however, definitely saved me from rating this lower because I just did not connect with it up front. 3.5 stars!