The Caretaker

Despite being a massive wimp when it comes to horror movies, I always enjoyed reading horror books when I was younger. But for some reason I’ve drifted away from the genre and not really read anything scary for years. Yet somehow The Caretaker had made its way onto my TBR list and I kept almost giving it a try, only to chicken out and choose something else at the last minute. Well that’s now changed and I am very glad that I took the plunge.

The Caretaker follows Macy, a down on her luck twenty something who’s dad has recently died, leaving her to look after her younger sister. The sisters are broke which is why Macy answer an ad for a caretaker (in the American sense, not the British sense of someone who looks after a school) to look after an elderly man.

Suffice to say there is a LOT more to this caretaking gig than Macy ever could have realised and she very soon finds herself trapped in a nightmare situation of having to perform certain very odd rites in order to “save the world”.

The vibe of the book is suitably claustrophobic and panic inducing, there are some really good deflections for the obvious cry of “why doesn’t she just leave”, which I think was dealt with excellently. There are plenty of tense and suspenseful sequences that leave you gripped and having to keep turning pages to see what the hell is going to happen next.

After careful consideration, I liked how it ended as well. I have been told my book has an unconventional ending and I think this fits a similar mould.

A really good, and pretty short, little blast of horror to get the blood pumping and the senses turned up to 11.