The Caretaker

Launched in April of this year and written by the breakout author Marcus Kliewer, The Caretaker is the perfect example of the best kind of horror novel. The kind that actually upsets me emotionally in a very realistic way.

The story revolves around our main character, Macy. She and her younger sister are in financial trouble. Deep trouble. So when she’s offered a ridiculous sum of money to house-sit for a weekend, she takes the job despite her very genre-savvy misgivings. The strangest thing about the job is the list of oddball but seemingly innocuous rituals that she’s expected to perform.

Macy’s job starts out being high stakes because of the money. The money that she desperately needs to survive. But the stakes go even higher when she realizes that the rituals she’s performing are intended, somehow, to hold back a dark and bloody apocalypse.

The horror of The Caretaker starts out so simply. Macy is doing her best to complete the rituals of the house when she accidentally misses one. She messes up just a little bit. But it’s enough to give my anxiety a jump scare, because we all know what’s going to come of it.

Rather than relying on lots of blood and gore, The Caretaker gets under your skin with the subtle, constant fear that Macy has done something wrong. Something terribly, horribly wrong.

If you read Kliewer’s first book, We Used To Live Here, you’ll notice that The Caretaker doesn’t feel as mature. It almost feels young adult. (Though I wouldn’t recommend this book for young adults.) The reason for this is entirely the main character, Macy. She is a very new adult navigating a difficult world. Her father is gone. She’s responsible for her little sister. She feels, like I think we all do in our early twenties, like a child masquerading as an adult. And that comes through! This is the very definition of a character-driven story. And that’s why it works. The paranoia Macy feels is felt by the reader as well.

Finally, The Caretaker did something that the world at large, or at least social media, fails to do on a regular basis.

It got the mental illness OCD right. In fact, that’s basically what this book is about.

OCD is not, and never has been, the same as someone being particular about their surroundings. It’s not the same as being a neat freak. It is an unavoidable impulse to do specific things because if you do not, something terrible is going to happen. The Caretaker brings that compulsion into reality in a horrific way. Macy has to check the doors to make sure they’re locked. Then she has to check them again, because they might have become unlocked. After a few hours, the compulsion almost doesn’t have anything to do with the rituals.

Overall, The Caretaker was a fantastic book. It was dark, upsetting, and impossible to stop reading. I cannot recommend it enough.

Want to read another book review? Check out my thoughts on The October Film Haunt.