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Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker is horror, but it’s so skillfully interwoven with mystery, time travel, and mythology, that it’ll appeal to a broader set of readers. Like an unreliable narrator? You’ve got one. Love trying to figure out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth? Check.
Told in dual timelines, we meet Lee, who’s on the lam in 2026, landing at his dad’s house in Kagoshima, after apparently killing his college roommate. (His memory is foggy, and he doesn’t know where he left the body. UH, WHAT?) Lee discovers a closet that reveals a parallel timeline at this old house, where we meet Sen in 1877. Both are dealing with grief and dysfunctional families. Sen gets an extra helping of blind devotion wrapped in filial piety. And Lee is teetering on the edge, sedating himself with liberal doses of Benadryl and Ativan.
Japanese Gothic is unsettling and at times fairly graphic in its violence. It can be so matter of fact about it, that if you’re not typically a horror reader, it might catch you off guard. After all, Sen is a samurai in training. And Lee is haunted by his mother who disappeared while on vacation in Cambodia, and was possibly disposed of in a suitcase. The counterbalance to all this is the folktale of Urashima Taro, which rolls out over the course of the book. It’s also your clue that happy endings aren’t on the table for either Sen or Lee.
I loved it. Thought ultimately, Sen’s story was the more compelling of the two and eventually for me, Lee was just the means to finding out about her end. I came away with a bunch of questions, which will probably make this a good one for the right book club.
Questions like:
Why is Sen not freaking out about what Kagoshima looks like in 2026? Why would Lee learn to speak Japanese in order to talk to his dad’s girlfriends, when their own relationship is disengaged at best? And maybe most importantly, what is actually up with Hina, Lee’s dad’s girlfriend? Is she some kind of seer/shaman?Japanese Gothic releases on April 14, 2026. The audiobook is narrated by Natalie Naudus.
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Check out our roundup of 26 2026 releases by Asian and Pacific Islander Authors
