This Cursed House

Every fall I’m on the lookout for some good horror and thrillers to feed my spooky season cravings. One book I had been eagerly awaiting was Del Sandeen‘s debut novel, This Cursed House. It’s summer 1962 when Jemma has faced a series of difficulties at home in Chicago. From the death of her adoptive father to her boyfriend’s betrayal, she’s desperate enough to accept a stranger’s offer of employment down in New Orleans. But the job she arrives to do isn’t teaching a child, as she’d expected… it’s breaking a family curse. The more secrets Jemma uncovers—and the more entwined she becomes with this family—the more urgent it is that Jemma resolves the curse and frees herself.

Tropes & Narrative Devices:

Cursed family
Isolated home
Creepy housekeeper
So many secrets!
Locals tell her to turn back now… she ignores them
She can see ghosts
Third-person POV

What I Liked:

Jemma’s abilities. She can see ghosts, but she’s always been reluctant and even scared of them. Her parents certainly never encouraged these abilities. But now that she’s in New Orleans, this undesired skill could be the key to breaking the curse.
This strange family. The Duchon family have a reputation around town, and upon Jemma’s arrival at their home, she finds that they truly are weird. They’re old-fashioned and secretive, but somehow the more Jemma learns about them, the stranger they become. Are they sane? Are they dangerous? Can she trust them?
Discussions of family and connection. Jemma was adopted as a baby, and now that both of her parents and her boyfriend are gone, she’s so alone. She yearns for some belonging… maybe she could find it with the Duchons? Jemma doesn’t really fit in with them, and they are odd, but could it be the family she’s always longed to be a part of?
Race and history. Jemma is Black; the Duchons claim to be, though they’re light enough to pass for white. There are many discussions surrounding race and internalized racism, Black history in the American South, and the horrors of slavery only a century prior to the book’s events.
Secrets and curses. Jemma is there to break a curse, but that will be hard to do considering all the secrets the Duchons insist on keeping from her. Jemma uncovers the truth, bit by bit, both from conversations with others and through the secrets she finds around the Duchon home. What is the true nature of this curse and how can she finally end it before it’s too late?

What Didn’t Work for Me:

It was sometimes a slower pace. Both the narrative and even the timespan the characters were in felt like it could have sped up a bit. Jemma is there for several months, but the story would have felt more urgent with a tighter timeline.

Final Thoughts

This Cursed House is a captivating Southern Gothic full of horror, from ghosts and curses to sordid secrets from a family’s past. I enjoyed Jemma and her path to uncovering the truth, and the spooky vibes were well done from the start. The book ends in such a way that I could see Jemma facing more supernatural mysteries; hopefully this will be the start of a series, because I’d love to read more!

Special thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy This Cursed House here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

This Cursed House by Del Sandeen
Audience	Adult
Genre	Horror
Setting	New Orleans
Number of Pages	384
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	October 8, 2024
Publisher	Berkley

Official Summary

One of Esquire‘s Best Horror Books of 2024

In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth: They’re under a curse, and they think she can break it.

In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over.

But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn’t what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes out: The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.

As Jemma wrestles with the gift she’s run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.

About the Author

Credit: Christy Whitehead

Del Sandeen lives in Northeast Florida, where she works as a writer and copy editor. She is the recipient of the 2019 Diverse Writers Grant and the 2019 Diverse Worlds Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation. Her short fiction has appeared in in FIYAH: Speculative Literary Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Nightlight Podcast, and Magnolia, a Journal of Women’s Socially Engaged Literature Volume III. Her nonfiction has appeared in Allure, Uncanny, Gay magazine and ZORA. She’s the author of three young adult books: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: Joined by Fate; Coping With Racial Profiling; and Maya Angelou: Writer and Activist.

Del is represented by Jim McCarthy at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC. Her debut novel, THIS CURSED HOUSE, will be published in 2024. She can be found on Twitter @DelSandeen.