A name that has started to pop up repeatedly in the horror literary world is Kylie Lee Baker. Mostly publishing books in the young adult fantasy genre, Baker surprised readers with her debut horror novel in 2025, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng. The book was announced on the preliminary ballot for a Bram Stoker Award, but unfortunately, it didn’t make the finalists. Her newest release, Japanese Gothic, on the other hand, seems like a shoo-in for 2026’s nominees.
Released just a little more than a year after Bat Eater, Baker’s newest 352-page ghost story is already making the review rounds as one of the early year’s best horror novels. In fact, the novel recently made the USA Today bestseller list and was reviewed by The New York Times, which shed even more light on the underrated author.
Japanese Gothic takes place in the volcano-adjacent seaside city of Kagoshima, Japan, and follows mid-20s college student Lee Turner as he flees from the United States to stay with his father after murdering his roommate and hiding his body, without remembering the how or why. Once Lee reaches his father’s house in Kagoshima, he realizes the house is more than 200 years old, and he begins to see the ghost of a teenage samurai who lived in the house almost 150 years before.
The story also follows Sen, a teenage girl in 1877 who has been training as a samurai for her entire life, and, along with her father, is hopeful for the return and rebellion of the samurai, after they’re wiped out by the Japanese government. Battling through familial trauma, abuse, and starvation, Sen starts seeing the ghost of a young man in her room, who doesn’t look like he’s from her world. Sen feels she must confront the spirit and force it from her home by any means necessary.
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Not only is the idea of mirroring ghost stories such a unique and refreshing idea from Baker, but it also plays on the theories that spirits in the afterlife don’t live on a linear timeline and experience all time and no time at once. Each chapter jumps back and forth between Lee and Sen’s planes of existence, culminating in their meeting and eventually a strange partnership.
Before the main characters meet, a deep dive is done on both of their pasts. Both backstories are so tragic and horrifying in their own ways, which both lead to their traumas and eventual mental breaks from reality and the present. Lee, whose mother was kidnapped and trafficked while on vacation in Cambodia when he was a kid, only wishes to reunite with the person he loves more than anyone. Sen, who has been trained into a soulless killing machine through abuse and threats, only wishes to make her father proud and die with honor.
The Japanese setting, folklore, and historical accuracy add so much incredible detail to Sen’s side of the story, and the intense, frustrating confusion of Lee’s past makes the reader constantly want to learn more. Japanese Gothic is a fantastic character study at its core, and its spooky ghost story is just the tasty outer shell.
The book has many layers that peel back with each chapter, unraveling mysteries on both ends. Lee wants to use the existence of Sen to reconnect with his mother’s spirit. Sen wants to use Lee to learn about the future of her family. It’s all so heartbreaking, but their goals are brought on by their traumatic experiences, and they can’t stop.
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Neither Lee nor Sen is especially likable, and they’re certainly not good people, but there’s a level of understanding and acceptance for their actions, and regardless of their expected outcomes, some way, somehow, Baker is able to make the reader not just care about what happens to them but actively root for them, despite both of them being murderous and probably psychopathic.
Japanese Gothic’s pace is fast, and its blood and brutality are plentiful, which appeals to the gore hounds, along with the fans of folklore, historical fiction, and a unique haunted house story. The book’s final act and ending give the readers all the gut-wrenching, blood-soaked answers they’ve been waiting for, but Baker still leaves things ambiguous enough for second-guessing and questioning whether something is real or just a possible glimpse, lost in time.
Without a doubt, this book is one of my favorite reads of the year, and I completely recommend it to all horror, historical fiction, and mystery lovers. The high 4.14 Goodreads score seems to agree with me. Japanese Gothic is now available at all major book retailers.
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