Book Review: Begotten by Kate Cherrell
Genre: Gothic Horror
Age: Adult
Format: ebook
Begotten is a Gothic horror novel that cleaves to the traditions and tropes of the genre in a way most readers will find familiar and comforting while simultaneously prickling with unease.
This book started out strong. It had all the elements I love in a Gothic horror involving a creepy mansion with sinister undertones. At the start, our protagonist returns home to a dreary, isolated estate in Ireland from her new and vibrant life in Chelsea, London, in order to claim her inheritance of the crumbling home in the wake of her father's sudden passing. Alice is immediately met by unfriendly and off-putting staff in a house thick with dust and decay, by a mother who seems beset with an unnamed mental illness, and an estranged little sister who seriously ups the creep factor. For how short this book actually is, it felt long and the story dragged at times, a little uncertain about where it was going. While this worked for a while, given how the emotional and psychological decay of our POV character eerily echoed the decay of the house, I wish the story had had a little more forward momentum and a bit more plot to get Alice to (literally) take action. As it is, all the sinister moments seemed to go nowhere and didn't really seem to build up to much of anything, which sadly let the tension fizzle.
The climax of the story, where I thought we would finally get some answers in what seemed set to be a massive twist, didn’t quite happen the way I hoped and the book ended rather quickly. This made the story (and the concepts within) seem somewhat unfinished and not fully realized. The story merely flirted with themes of sexism, bigotry, mental illness, and classicism without ever fully committing to exploring any of these or how they might intersect in the given milieu.
While I really enjoyed the writing and the pages certainly drip atmosphere, I wish Alice had had a bit more agency and that there had been a greater revelation or reveal so the story could’ve packed more of a punch. Ultimately, I wanted more from this book, and think it could've been brilliant with a more thorough examination of its themes on the page. That said, this author can certainly craft a sentence and I look forward to whatever Kate Cherrell writes next.
Review By Xan van Rooyen
I received this ebook from the publisher for review consideration.
