Kate’s Review: “This Cursed House”

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Book: “This Cursed House” by Del Sandeen

Publishing Info: Berkley, October 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth. They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it.

In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over. 

But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.

As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

Who doesn’t love a good ghost story? I know that I do, even when it isn’t October (though a good ghost story in October is just icing on an already spooky cake). I am always looking out for ghost stories, and “This Cursed House” by Del Sandeen has been on my radar for a long while now because of this. And now it’s finally time to dive in. But this isn’t just any ghost story. One of the haunting things in this tale is the spectre of American racism.

As a horror story involving a Gothic aesthetic and some scary ghosts as well as a family curse, this book is solid and well done. I liked following Jemma, a Black woman from Chicago going to work for a wealthy family in New Orleans, as she realizes that the job she was hired to do isn’t at all what the mysterious and odd Duchon Family wants her to do. Jemma can see spirits, a gift she has had and suppressed her entire life, and when she gets to the Duchon’s estate the ghosts really start to show themselves. I really liked the slow build dread of the spirits, as well as some of the more heartbreaking encounters that Jemma has with some of them, showing a wide array of reasons these ghosts are lingering. I also enjoyed the Gothic vibes, the isolation made pretty literal as we find that the Duchons are trapped on the estate due to a family curse, the same one that seems to cause a family member to die ever year on the same day. I don’t want to spoil much here because the surprises and reveals need to be revealed when Sandeen is ready, but I will say that the twists and turns and origins of the curse kept me guessing. And given the setting and themes this is very much a Southern Gothic tale, and it’s a very well done one that feels in the same vein as “The Reformatory” with its grotesque antagonists and sense of foreboding with roots tied to trauma and a dark history not only of a cursed family, but of the American South itself.

But what really cemented this story’s strength were the themes about race, identity, and racism in the Jim Crow South and how that malevolence poisons all kinds of people’s thoughts and minds. The Duchon Family is a white passing Black family that sees itself as above darker Black people like Jemma, and who help uphold the systems and abuses in place because they directly benefit from it, even hurting their own family because of it. Sandeen approaches these characters in very nuanced ways without letting any of the more deplorable ones off the hook, finding explanations for their behavior while never excusing it. It makes for a very difficult read at times as the Duchons treat Jemma absolutely terribly, as well as other Black characters with darker skin from microaggressions to straight up violence. It elevates the already strong family drama to even higher heights, and I found these very real horrors of racism, colorism, and racial violence to be very effective and very upsetting.

“This Cursed House” is a solid Southern Gothic horror tale, one that really got under my skin. I highly recommend it for horror fans, and really anyone who wants a disturbing tale for the Halloween season.

Rating 8: A haunting and biting, “This Cursed House” is a Southern Gothic, a haunted house story, and an examination of identity, self loathing, and racism.

Reader’s Advisory:

“This Cursed House” is included on the Goodreads list “October 2024 Horror”.