This Cursed House by Del Sandeen | Horror Fiction Review
This one started out strong but was slightly disappointing in the end.
My 2 Cents for Free!
“It’s the living you need to be scared of.”
The story starts out promising when a young woman escaping a crappy relationship accepts a job that includes room and board. Jemma thinks she's going to be serving as a nanny to a child. She doesn't ask questions, leaves everything behind and travels to New Orleans. She soon realizes there aren't any children in the old mansion and the people that live there are all beautiful and strange and never leave the house and now she's so entwined she seems stuck too.
I enjoyed the first 1/3. It had an air of mystery and eeriness that kept me reading and some throwback tones of VC Andrews, but you really need to go all in if you're going to go there and this one didn't. The villains were all rather dull and behaved as if all the life had been sucked out of them which is very boring to read after a bit. Get off your lazy butts and DO SOMETHING, perhaps a little research maybe? Ugh. I have to admit finishing this book was a struggle because of the thread of forgiveness worming its way through everything. Call me cold but some people who have not atoned and paid for their hatefulness in a deep meaningful way do not deserve forgiveness and their victims should feel no guilt. So yeah. 2 1/2.
Final Rating: ⭐⭐1/2's
Publisher Plot Synopsis
In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth. They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it.
In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over.
But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.
As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.
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