Seen by James YatesMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
When Caroline takes in her sister’s baby after a sudden tragedy, she thinks the hardest part will be learning how to care for a child while navigating her own grief. But soon people around her begin to die under strange and unexplainable circumstances.
As the body count grows, Caroline is forced to confront a chilling possibility: that protecting her family may mean facing an unthinkable choice.
Seen is a haunting story of family, loss, and the choices we never imagine we’ll face.
As the body count grows, Caroline is forced to confront a chilling possibility: that protecting her family may mean facing an unthinkable choice.
Seen is a haunting story of family, loss, and the choices we never imagine we’ll face.
—
I’m currently studying for a PhD in Pregnancy Horror Literature, so when I saw this book available on NetGalley, I was so excited to read it.
The body horror is great in this story. The birth scene at the start with its monstrous energy drew me right in! I also love horror that brings in those weird, dark, demonic cults, and this book does this perfectly.
The biggest issue for me, however, was the pacing. There’s enough plot here for a story at least two or three times longer, and at the moment, everything is so rushed. We don’t get enough time between plot points for us to process anything, and it feels like we’re constantly on a rollercoaster. There are no ‘quiet’ moments. Every scene practically has a jump scare. Things happen too quickly, and Caroline gets the ‘clues’ too easily (it’s too convenient that Caroline has left her notes so easily available about the cult) and I feel like, because of this, there’s not enough time to adequately develop the escalating tension or give the ‘big’ things the time they deserve to be fully explored.
However, despite this, I did keep reading. In fact, I read it in one sitting, and this was a sign to me that this story has something. There’s an urgency to the story that gripped me, and while I’d have preferred the pacing to be different, it didn’t exhaust me to the point I stopped reading. I was curious about what was going to happen at every point and the author writes with a compelling voice that’s casual, chatty, and relatable.
And it also has ocean gothic! So, I love horror stories that bring in ragged coasts and sea spirits, and basically anything to do with the water. When I found out what was possessing the baby, I couldn’t help but grin (I promise I’m not weird!). And this was a really great decision on the part of the author, given that pregnancy horror often uses ocean gothic language, building connections between water and the womb.
The ocean gothic writing here is beautiful. So vivid and dark and gothic. I loved the female personification of the sea.
But I did also want to know a lot more about the characters. I wanted to know more about who Caroline is without the baby. What were her goals before she ended up being a mother, due to the death of her sister? What was she like as a child? We’re told she had foster parents and was in and out of the system, but how has this affected her psychologically? What trauma does this bring her? How has this affected her sense of identity? I wanted more characterisation for her, and her husband too. All we get for him really is that he’s the perfect man. He seemed to be there to aid the plot.
By the end of the story, Caroline says she does love the baby after all—but where does this come from? I would’ve liked to have seen a slower build up of this, so that it becomes more believable.
Looking at Jules, I think it would’ve helped to have some lengthier flashbacks earlier on that showed the kind of relationship the two had, before Jules died in childbirth. I just felt that I didn’t really know her. Was it unusual for her to have been lured into a cult? Or had similar things happened before? Did Caroline feel protective of her sister? And how does this manifest in her grief for Jules?
Similarly, Caroline also tells us that she’s met Heath, the baby’s dad a few times, but we aren’t then told much more about him. We don’t know him at all, and this brings distance into the narrative as we are aware that Caroline knows more than we do. For me, this just doesn’t really work in a first-person narrative. I wonder if the story would’ve worked better if the prologue was a flashback to when Caroline met up with Jules and Heath at one point, and then Chapter 1 was that birth scene where Jules dies.
I can see similarities with The Vile Thing We Created (Robert P. Ottone) where the wife thinks something demonic is wrong with the baby, but the husband is skeptical, and I do think this could’ve been developed a little more too. Does Caroline ever question herself and her own sanity?
On a technical side, there are quite a few dialogue problems in terms of tags being incorrectly used, along with punctuation. The formatting also made it tricky to read, as everything was in italics and right-justified, but the story was compelling enough that after a while I was able to look past this.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.
View all my reviews
I’m currently studying for a PhD in Pregnancy Horror Literature, so when I saw this book available on NetGalley, I was so excited to read it.
The body horror is great in this story. The birth scene at the start with its monstrous energy drew me right in! I also love horror that brings in those weird, dark, demonic cults, and this book does this perfectly.
The biggest issue for me, however, was the pacing. There’s enough plot here for a story at least two or three times longer, and at the moment, everything is so rushed. We don’t get enough time between plot points for us to process anything, and it feels like we’re constantly on a rollercoaster. There are no ‘quiet’ moments. Every scene practically has a jump scare. Things happen too quickly, and Caroline gets the ‘clues’ too easily (it’s too convenient that Caroline has left her notes so easily available about the cult) and I feel like, because of this, there’s not enough time to adequately develop the escalating tension or give the ‘big’ things the time they deserve to be fully explored.
However, despite this, I did keep reading. In fact, I read it in one sitting, and this was a sign to me that this story has something. There’s an urgency to the story that gripped me, and while I’d have preferred the pacing to be different, it didn’t exhaust me to the point I stopped reading. I was curious about what was going to happen at every point and the author writes with a compelling voice that’s casual, chatty, and relatable.
And it also has ocean gothic! So, I love horror stories that bring in ragged coasts and sea spirits, and basically anything to do with the water. When I found out what was possessing the baby, I couldn’t help but grin (I promise I’m not weird!). And this was a really great decision on the part of the author, given that pregnancy horror often uses ocean gothic language, building connections between water and the womb.
The ocean gothic writing here is beautiful. So vivid and dark and gothic. I loved the female personification of the sea.
But I did also want to know a lot more about the characters. I wanted to know more about who Caroline is without the baby. What were her goals before she ended up being a mother, due to the death of her sister? What was she like as a child? We’re told she had foster parents and was in and out of the system, but how has this affected her psychologically? What trauma does this bring her? How has this affected her sense of identity? I wanted more characterisation for her, and her husband too. All we get for him really is that he’s the perfect man. He seemed to be there to aid the plot.
By the end of the story, Caroline says she does love the baby after all—but where does this come from? I would’ve liked to have seen a slower build up of this, so that it becomes more believable.
Looking at Jules, I think it would’ve helped to have some lengthier flashbacks earlier on that showed the kind of relationship the two had, before Jules died in childbirth. I just felt that I didn’t really know her. Was it unusual for her to have been lured into a cult? Or had similar things happened before? Did Caroline feel protective of her sister? And how does this manifest in her grief for Jules?
Similarly, Caroline also tells us that she’s met Heath, the baby’s dad a few times, but we aren’t then told much more about him. We don’t know him at all, and this brings distance into the narrative as we are aware that Caroline knows more than we do. For me, this just doesn’t really work in a first-person narrative. I wonder if the story would’ve worked better if the prologue was a flashback to when Caroline met up with Jules and Heath at one point, and then Chapter 1 was that birth scene where Jules dies.
I can see similarities with The Vile Thing We Created (Robert P. Ottone) where the wife thinks something demonic is wrong with the baby, but the husband is skeptical, and I do think this could’ve been developed a little more too. Does Caroline ever question herself and her own sanity?
On a technical side, there are quite a few dialogue problems in terms of tags being incorrectly used, along with punctuation. The formatting also made it tricky to read, as everything was in italics and right-justified, but the story was compelling enough that after a while I was able to look past this.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.
View all my reviews
