Marcus Kliewer returns with The Caretaker and the hardcover is on shelves today from Simon and Schuster.
Quick backstory in case you missed it. Kliewer wrote We Used to Live Here as a serialized short story on Reddit and it blew up. Netflix grabbed the film rights, while Simon and Schuster grabbed the novel rights. Overnight, he went from internet weirdo to a horror author with a bidding war for his name. That kind of rise does not happen by accident. The guy can write.
I am not going to lie, I had quite a few issues with the debut. I didn’t find it as flawless and UTTERLY amazing as everyone else did. I did enjoy the overall atmosphere for sure, but you can find my quick spoiler free review here. I also took offense that Marcus hasn’t answered my messages on whether or not the entity was Nyarlahotep or not.
Opinions aside, The Caretaker is his sophomore move. A young woman takes a caretaking job from Craigslist. The house is stuffed with weird rules. Then, the traditional oddities. Lights go off by themselves. Voices in empty rooms. Visitors knock when nobody is supposed to be there. Rabbits cover the property and cannot be allowed inside. That last one is the kind of detail that tells you Kliewer is still in his bag when it comes to weird. I feel that specific weirdness is the Kliewer’s whole shtick in this genre.
Sophomore novels are where a lot of horror writers either lock in or drop the ball. The first book is the ambitious first swing. The second one is the test. Does the voice still work when it is not a collection of Reddit posts. Does the dread continue to carry when you have a publisher and a marketing budget and every genre blogger has their eyes open?
The early reviews are landing strong. Calling it mind bending and menacing, weird psychological horror. That is the exact lane Kliewer should be in, but I am curious if he has typecast himself into a niche that he is going to continue to stay in. These early reviews seem to be very in line with the exact same reviews as his debut.
Craigslist horror is an interesting take. We know that real life horrors have been committed through this avenue. I will say that there is something about accepting a job off an internet ad that already puts the reader in a trauma crouch, however, much like the first one, I feel that it will be hard for me to connect with because I just would fucking leave. It can frustrate me when you know something is wrong and you watch the protagonist walk into it anyway. But, I guess, you can’t really avoid that in horror. I just got to accept the ride.
I am going to be placing my order for this soon, I am just waiting on the results of the Goodreads giveaway.
Who else is grabbing a copy, and what from Kliewer are you most curious to see on the page?