Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker – a dark, haunting mystery across time

I just finished Kylie Lee Baker's book, Japanese Gothic, and really loved it. I saw it on a whim and picked it up (first time I'd done that in a while – I should do it more often) when the summary caught my eye, and man… I'm so glad I did.

The official synposis:

October, 2026: Lee Turner doesn’t remember how or why he killed his college roommate. The details are blurred and bloody. All he knows is he has to flee New York and go to the one place that might offer refuge—his father’s new home in Japan, a house hidden by sword ferns and wild ginger. But something is terribly wrong with the house: no animals will come near it, the bedroom window isn't always a window, and a woman with a sword appears in the yard when night falls.

October, 1877: Sen is a young samurai in exile, hiding from the imperial soldiers in a house behind the sword ferns. A monster came home from war wearing her father’s face, but Sen would do anything to please him, even turn her sword on her own mother. She knows the soldiers will soon slaughter her whole family when she sees a terrible omen: a young foreign man who appears outside her window.

One of these people is a ghost, and one of these stories is a lie.

Something is hiding beneath the house of sword ferns, and Lee and Sen will soon wish they never unburied it.

Lee and Sen's stories first occur independently of each other – a troubled and (non-specifically) neurodivergent young man hiding from a crime he can barely remember committing, only that he did so, and a young girl training to be a samurai by a father she's only barely convinced is still the same man who left for war and returned in shame. But the closet door in their rooms – the same room over over a century apart – sometimes functions as a gate between their times, allowing the two of them to visit one another.

Lee seeks Sen's help to solve the mystery of what happened to his mother, who went missing over a decade ago and is believed long dead, thinking that Sen is a ghost and his pathway into the world of the dead. If nothing else, just to confirm his mother is truly dead. While Sen learns of her family's fate in the future from Lee and his resources, and has to come to terms with to either confront her destiny, or try to change it.

The book changes perspectives back and forth between Lee and Sen, sometimes showing their lives on their own, sometimes showing the same events from both of their perspectives, which shows some interesting cultural differences between them.

The house itself is also a character – a lot of time is spent going over the way it's changed over the years, and the way it's stayed the same. The way that it's pulled them both in, and small changes made across the timelines to show that neither of them are mad – it's very clear that their bridge across time is physically happening, deepening the mystery between them.

Lee and Sen are both really interesting characters. Lee has an obsession with finding the truth, even if it causes pain or discomfort, and his analytical talents are said to unnerve those around him – his widower father in particular. He starts the book constantly taking depressants to keep his mind slow and fuzzy and keep his innate curiosity and bay (making it easier to be more presentable), but eventually abandons those and struggles with his "real" self for the first time in years. He's not an evil person, but doesn't seem to quite have the same morality as most – his anxiety over his roommate's death is less over the actual act and more over his lack of memory over the act and event itself.

Sen is doubly an outsider – both a young woman being trained as a samurai, and a samurai in exile after her father's participation in the failed Satsuma Rebellion (a real event). Her father is a cold and merciless teacher, training Sen to be a warrior so they can fight back against the Imperial Army once the samurai recover their strength, but his harsh teaching often pushes her to extremes. Despite her harsh training though, she's still a kind person, genuinely loving her family and believing in her father's cause – though she hides those softer emotions deep, trying to convince herself she is only her father's sword to use as he sees fit.

Woven throughout the story is the Japanese legend of Urashima Tarō, a Japanese fairy tale of a man who saves a turtle that is truly the Princess of the Sea, Otohime, who brings him to her palace beneath the waves. Upon returning home against Otohime's protests after what seemed only a few days, he finds over three hundred years have passed. He was given a gift by Otohime, a box he was told never to open, but in his grief does so – all the "time" he would have lived consuming him at once, aging him to dust.

How the stories of Lee, Senn, and Urashima Tarō intersect is something I obviously won't spoil here. But the last few chapters really pulled the story together – a few preceding chapters feeling oddly disjointed and confusing put into focus by the finale.

I definitely recommend this one if you like dark horror and tension, and some psychological and mythological elements too. Anyone else read it? What did you think?