The Caretaker: A Novel

Ever felt hostage by your own thoughts or ocd patterns? In this story, it's a blur on whether the main character is being held captive by her own internal hauntings or if it's the house itself haunting her through a series of rituals to keep her there, maintaining her in a cycle of barely surviving so she's never a step ahead. ***SPOILERS*** PLEASE STOP IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT*** There are similarities between the house the caretaker/main character is hired to look after in comparison to the Lament Configuration in the British horror film "Hellraiser". The puzzle box is a mechanical device that serves as a door to another dimension. This house slowly reveals itself to serve as a door to allow an evil being to flip a coin to either a side that will favor your current world and set it free or turn it into a part of hell. Other worlds have already been converted w/this demon's intention to place all worlds as puzzle pieces, building a stronger and larger hell as time goes by. Towards the end of the story, I saw the main character being choked by two options. She wld choose to stay in the world she already knew which wld drive her to madness. - A familiar world where humans suffered from nervousness and stress, a world w/o a cure where all they did was manage their psychosis through daily rituals OR choose to take a break from necessary social norms, allowing space for the old order to burn away and be replaced by something new. I was able to adapt a contemporary view from this story as it settled into an analogy w/fear of societal doom.

I have never been more personally betrayed by a book I so badly wanted to love than The Caretaker.




This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. Creepy Craigslist job? Isolated house on the Oregon coast? Vague supernatural horror with “nothing less than the survival of humanity at stake”?

Oh, I was locked in.

And to be fair—it got me. I read this in one sitting. ONE. SITTING.
Was I gripped? Yes.
Was I also increasingly confused, frustrated, and questioning every life choice that led me here? Also yes.

Because here’s the thing: the entire time I was reading, my brain was like,
“Okay but… this makes no sense.”

Macy (affectionately referred to as Hot Mess Express) takes a caretaking job that is so obviously a bad idea it might as well come with a neon sign flashing GIRL, DON’T. And listen, I love a flawed protagonist. I support women’s wrongs. But at some point I need the decisions to feel like they exist in the same universe as logic.

I tried to empathize with Macy. I really did. She has a tragic backstory, the setup is right there for emotional depth, and yet… we got a wildly incompetent self-loathing protagonist whose decisions are so questionable I started rooting for the evil entity.



And the horror? Vibes. Just… vibes.
Spooky things happen. Ominous rules exist. “Follow the Rites” gets repeated like it’s about to mean something HUGE…

…and then… does it?
Respectfully: I still don’t know.

There’s little explanation for what’s actually going on, and the ending?
Loose threads. Everywhere. Just flapping in the wind mocking me for my confusion.

I closed the book and genuinely sat there like:
“Wait. That’s it? Where’s the resolution?”

Sir. I have questions. So MANY questions.

Compulsively readable? Yes.
Satisfying? Not even a little.

It’s like the book cast a spell to keep me turning pages but forgot to include the substance.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for this review copy.

Didn’t hate it, didn’t love it! Maybe I would have been at the edge of the seat more if I read it instead of listened.
Maybe it’s just me but while the narrator sounded panicked and nervous during those scenes, I don’t think that relayed to me. I wasn’t like omg what’s going to happen next or felt the panic. Ehh but great plot and setting! May try reading it in the future and will see if my feelings are evoked as intended.
Also the ending ? I needed more …. Would it be a series ? Soo many questions left unanswered.
It’s more a 3.75 for me.

"A supernatural horror about a young woman who accepts a caretaking job from Craigslist, only to discover the position has consequences far greater-and more dangerous-than she ever could have imagined." I was excited to read "The Caretaker," because it had an interesting promise and | love horror novels set in the Pacific Northwest. I was disappointed. With the exception of a short first chapter, the story is told from Macy's POV. Considering that this is a 320 page novel, her character is not well developed. Macy is whiny and incompetent. The rites" seem arbitrary and confusing. There's not much tension. The book is not well paced, and the ending was too open ended/ambiguous. “The Caretaker" would have worked better as a Novella. Personally, I did not find this book unsettling, disturbing, or scary. I don't think most people who read Horror will either. My ARC was provided by Atria Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.