The Caretaker
Author: Marcus Kliewer
Genre: Fiction – Horror
Publisher: 12:01 Books
Pages: 295

Purchased from: Octopus Books – 116 3rd Avenue Ottawa, Ontario (Purchased Online)
Paid: $26.99 CAD

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)

FOLLOW THE RITES….

FOLLOW THE RITES…

FOLLOW THE RITES…

Marcus Kliewer’s The Caretaker starts with a premise that should have been right up my alley: an isolated setting, unsettling mysteries, and the promise of psychological horror lurking under the surface. On paper, it has all the ingredients for a very compelling horror-thriller. Unfortunately, the execution never lives up to that potential.

The novel’s greatest weakness is its dialogue and main character. Conversations between the protagonist and her sister have a weird sheen of inauthenticity; that weird cringiness that comes from an author who hasn’t quite mastered writing dialogue from a dissimilar perspective from their own. Instead, it reads like an older person’s approximation of how young adults speak or think; as if every poor millennial or gen-z walks around with quirky and quippy thoughts about the broke life. Rather than tactful grounding the characters, it made them feel artificial.

That problem is compounded by a frustrating protagonist. Horror often asks of readers to accept questionable decisions made under distress, but The Caretaker pushes that well beyond the breaking point. Without spoiling the novel completely, the plot asks that the protagonist perform some very specific rituals to prevent bad things from happening while she watches over a house that does weird and spooky shitttt. She has to keep it up for three days.

Somehow, the protagonist consistently makes baffling choices and fucks up so bad that it makes her less sympathetic and more exasperating to follow. Instead of rooting for her survival, I found myself snorting at how spectacularly incompetent she could be. It’s difficult to invest emotionally in a story when its central character comes across someone who comes across of hopelessly incapable.

The horror aspect of the novel also fell flat. Rather than building genuine dread or suspense, much of the novel felt like an extended internet creepypasta. The premise has echoes of the sort of stories that thrive on Reddit’s horror communites like r/nosleep. Short, eerie concepts that work very well in a few thousand worlds but when stretched across an entire novel, the scares become repetitive or predictable. The result is a story that barely manages to surprise or genuinely unsettle.

By the end you limp to the ending, there’s very little payoff for the journey getting there. The conclusion lacked the emotional or narrative reward that a slow-burning horror novel needs, leaving the entire experience feeling more or so hollow and abrupt.

wHAT IT COMES DOWN TO

The Caretaker isn’t a terrible novel, but it’s one that never rises above being merely serviceable. There are flashes of an interesting concept buried beneath the surface, and it’s easy to imagine a much stronger version of this story with sharper dialogue, more believable characters, and a more satisfying conclusion.

If you’re looking for a quick, disposable horror read, it’s worth borrowing this one from your local public library. That perhaps the greatest disappointment; the premise has the potential to become a memorable psychological horror but the execution missed the mark and leaves it feeling like a missed opportunity for some good horror fiction.