Have You Read This? It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

 

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.