Review: This Cursed House

This Cursed House by Del Sandeen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 stars 

I buddy read this over on a Horror Discord, if you like stories that will exhaust you about pushing a forgiveness narrative (to the point of insanity) with some ghosts, this would be your bag. Oh, and cousin banging. 

Jemma lives in Chicago and grew up with adoptive parents, when she catches her boyfriend cheating and the other woman is pregnant, she has a breakdown that leads to her losing her teaching job. When she answers a call to be a tutor for a family down in New Orleans, well, she thinks a tutor, it's never really said, just the amount a week is crazy good, so she doesn't ask a lot of questions and heads on down. There she lives with the Duchon family, who she eventually learns is her family and they're cursed and she thinks she's cursed too, it takes her a ridiculous amount of time to test if she's cursed. 

As the story goes on, it's clear that colorism has lead to the Duchon's being cursed, a curse put on them by Jemma's mother but that's not all there is to the story, ghost are also around and with Jemma's ability to see them, the Duchon's think she's the key to breaking the curse. The Duchon's are aholes who deserve nothing from Jemma but Jemma thinks the curse that kills a Duchon on her birthday could effect her too, so she keeps staying to try and help break the curse. The curse keeps the Duchons on their property so cousins end up together (they initially thought they were brother and sister and were happy to learn, nope, only cousins) and Jemma feels sorry for them, even though they constantly think they're better than her because they're lighter skinned. 

The story constantly pushed a forgiveness narrative, Jemma and her mother have to forgive the family for what they did and then the curse will be broken and other various ways it's weaved in. Character motivations were hard to believe in and made it hard for me to get into this story. The latter part when the ghosts came in was more interesting and I did like how some of the plot lead to Jemma building to loving herself. However, things were just never developed enough for me or didn't make much sense SPOILER Jemma has spent her whole life wanting to know her biological family, when she meets them they're aholes and honestly she should have bounced first chance but then it's revealed her mother is alive but they end up hardly talking and when there's a chance for her to leave with her mother, she ends up staying and it felt very off that this key person that Jemma has always wanted to know and the story used to build up to a big reveal, just ends up flittering off never to be heard from again. END SPOILER

Felt directionless, character motivations didn't always make sense, and the push of forgiveness NO MATTER WHAT, made this an unsatisfying read for me.

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