Our Take

Kylie Lee Baker writes horror that's less about jump scares and more about the low hum of dread that comes from being unseen and unprotected. Cora is a prickly, complicated narrator, someone who cleans up other people's worst moments for a living and can't stop performing the same reckoning on her own life. The book wears its anger openly, channeling real anti-Asian violence into something that feels both cathartic and uncomfortable, never didactic. Fans of My Sister, the Serial Killer will recognize the darkly funny, blood-soaked family dynamics, while readers of White Ivy might appreciate how identity and rage simmer under every scene. There's also a kinship with Bunny in how it uses genre trappings to talk about isolation and complicity among women. Baker doesn't tie things up neatly, and some readers may want more clarity by the end, but the ambiguity feels intentional, mirroring Cora's own unresolved grief. It's a horror novel that trusts its reader to sit with discomfort rather than resolve it, and that trust pays off in a book that lingers well past its final page.