The popularity of shows like Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and its sequel The Haunting of Bly Manor show that the public still has an appetite for spooky ghost stories. When bringing up these and other haunted house tales, it should be noted that there is more to these ghosts than just how they look in a flowing white sheet. Ghost stories are all about memories and hurts buried deep until they come screaming to the surface. This idea is especially evident in Jo Kaplan’s haunted mansion and haunted people novel It Will Just Be Us.
The book follows the story of the Wakefield family, namely
protagonist Sam Wakefield. She has just moved back with her mother into the family’s
haunted mansion, but what haunts this mansion doesn’t wear a sheet or rattle
chains. Wakefield Manor is where different moments in the house’s history
constantly replays for its tenants, showing Sam the lives of her ancestors as well
as traumas she’d rather forget about. When Sam’s pregnant sister Elizabeth moves
in following a fight with her husband, a new specter appears, a faceless boy
who wants to play with Sam in the worst possible way.
Kaplan inserts a lot of different horror tropes and plot
points like a plate spinner constantly adding one more plate to keep spinning,
always with the threat of the whole thing crashing down. While some of those
threads seem to dangle, Kaplan’s story crosses the finish line with a complete,
even heartbreaking, ending. She also demonstrates a deep understanding of how
fully-realized characters, not moaning and creaking doors, draw readers into
these stories. She creates very believable relationships and motivations, like
the sisters’ love/hate relationship and the mother’s alcoholism, which everyone
is forced to watch and relive over and over again. Like any good ghost story,
It Will Just Be Us is a character study of people who cannot escape the
gravitational pull of events that have them repeat or compound mistakes that could
lead to their downfall. Like many haunted house stories, Wakefield Mansion can
represent the minds of these women, both familiar home as well as prison where
each hallway and stairwell only lead to locked doors. If ever a show deserves
to be in the streaming pantheon of haunted house shows, hopefully this book
will join them. Until then, people should just read and enjoy the book.
