Book Review: This Cursed House by Del Sandeen
Genre: Southern Gothic
Age: Adult
Format: ebook
This book had so much potential, so much possibility, but ultimately ended up being messy and under-edited. This is one of those situations where I feel the author truly deserved a lot better, and the book required more care and attention before going out, even in arc format. Sandeen is clearly talented with some interesting ideas, but as a debut novel, I don’t think this held up.
Jemma receives a job offer, giving her the excuse she needs to escape Chicago and flee to New Orleans. But meeting the Duchon family, Jemma soon learns there’s deep secrets the white-passing Black family are hiding, including a curse that prevents them from leaving the property, and ensures one of them dies every 7 years. Fortunately, they seem confident that Jemma is the one wo can break the curse. Unfortunately, Jemma hasn’t been able to leave behind her own curse, soon seeing ghosts on the property.
Like I said, interesting ideas, and the book started off strong. However, it felt like many of the gothic elements became a little shoehorned in, and the ‘twists’ were incredibly easy to spot fairly early, making it feel more and more like Jemma was either ignoring the obvious, or just not terribly bright. After the halfway point, things started to feel a little repetitive, with information repeated multiple times or the same scenes playing out between the characters.
As with the plot, Jemma started off as a strong, interesting and engaging character, but events dragged on and her character started to feel flimsy. She goes back and forth a lot (more repetition) and rarely seems able to follow through on things without it taking pages of internal deliberation.
The pacing also felt off throughout, not helped by the repetition of “days later” or “weeks later”, but not to worry, nothing particularly interesting happens during these time periods, and Jemma seems to spend most of ignoring the obvious.
I want to emphasise that the book has strong ideas and a good plot backbone, and largely the writing was decent quality, but I feel like a stronger hand with editing, at all stages, would have really elevated this to the level it deserves to be at.
Review by Elle Turpitt
Twitter: @elleturpitt
Bluesky: @elleturpitt.bsky.social
I received this ebook from publisher Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for review consideration.
