JAPANESE GOTHIC by Kylie Lee Baker – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
Published by Hanover Square Press on April 14 2026
Genres: Adult, Horror
Pages: 352
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A mind-bending, bloody mystery, Japanese Gothic blends time travel and folklore into an emotional and heartbreaking story.

“Words carried easily through this house—it was a skeleton, and when you slid open enough doors, the whole world passed through it. There was no such thing as a secret in this house.”

Japanese Gothic is one of the most unique stories I’ve read in a long time, and Kylie Lee Baker has become a new favorite author after reading it. This is a multilayered story with two timelines, but here the timelines cross over via a mysterious closet. It’s also extremely violent, as one of the main characters is a samurai, so do be aware that there is quite a bit of graphic violence. It’s also an intriguing, mind-bending mystery that integrates Japanese folklore in a very unusual way. In short, readers who appreciate stellar writing and morally gray characters will not want to miss it.

We follow Lee Turner in the present, a college student who has decided to take a semester off after he snapped and killed his roommate James. At least that’s what he thinks happened. Lee is addicted to Benadryl and lives his life in a haze, and although he knows he killed James, he can’t remember what he did with the body. In order to avoid the police, he decides to flee to Japan and stay with his father for a while, hoping his memories will return. His father lives in a secluded 200 year old house that used to belong to a samurai, and Lee settles in, along with his father’s current girlfriend Hina.

The other timeline takes place in 1877 in the same house, and here we meet a young Japanese girl named Sen who is being trained by her samurai father, a cruel, bitter man who failed to die in battle and instead came home in disgrace. Sen’s life is a hard one. The family has very little food and two younger children in addition to Sen to feed. But Sen would do anything to please her father, and she’s forced to do unspeakable acts as a samurai in training, trying to live up to her father’s decree “The way of the samurai is found in death.”

The two timelines intersect when Lee and Sen discover that the closet in their bedroom is a portal into the other’s timeline. What follows is a surreal journey to discover why these two people from different eras were brought together.

Both Lee and Sen are fascinating characters, and if you asked me to pick a favorite timeline I wouldn’t be able to. Lee is dealing with addiction and trauma and his mental state is pretty shaky. When he was twelve, his mother disappeared during a trip to Cambodia, and ever since then, Lee has been trying to find out what happened to her (a body was never found) and to perhaps make contact with her ghost, if in fact she’s dead. He’s also stressed out about his roommate’s body being found and the police catching up with him. All this anxiety spills over onto the reader, and I found his chapters to be hallucinatory and tense.

Sen’s life is even more tragic. Even as young as she is (teenager, perhaps?), her sole focus is on becoming a good samurai and honoring her father. Sen’s dedication to basically learning how to chop off people’s heads was horrifying, especially since she has no choice. Her father decided she was going to become a samurai and she learns how to do whatever he demands, no matter how awful it is. After she meets Lee, though, that determination starts to falter. Lee is the first friend she’s ever had and she finds herself wanting to protect him.

Baker masterfully switches back and forth between Lee’s and Sen’s chapters, but the real magic happens when Sen appears in Lee’s closet one day, wielding her deadly katana. The two eventually form a tentative friendship, although it seems that friendship is destined for heartache. Lee thinks Sen is a ghost and he wants her to make contact with his mother. The author doesn’t really explain anything until the end, though, leaving things up to the reader to interpret. Is Sen a ghost? Is Lee a ghost too? Is James really dead? What role does Hina play in all these mysteries? And what really happened to Lee’s mother? Baker drops hints throughout her story but makes the reader work for the answers, which I loved.

Interwoven with Sen’s and Lee’s story is a Japanese tale about a man who saves a turtle and is taken under the sea as a reward to live with a sea princess. This odd story, which doesn’t seem to fit in, eventually plays an important role in the reveal at the end. Likewise, some disturbing themes are repeated throughout the story and are obviously important. Lee notices stains everywhere and each one seems to trigger a buried memory. He also has dreams of his mother’s body being folded into a suitcase and rolled away. When he arrives in Japan, he keeps seeing suitcase tracks in the sand.

The climax was bloody and shocking and worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy, but Baker doesn’t end things there. Instead, she gives readers a coda of sorts that ties all the different mystery threads together and answers many of the questions I had. Some of these reveals were simply mind-blowing, and I have to give props to the author for the creative way she wove all the story elements together. Did I completely understand the story? No, but that’s OK. I do love authors who trust their readers to fill in the blanks and come to their own conclusions. Japanese Gothic should be on every horror lover’s TBR, and I can’t wait to read more from Kylie Lee Baker.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.