Book Buzz: Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
“I thought about setting the historical timeline before the Meiji Restoration, when the samurai still would have had social standing and power. But ultimately, I liked the idea of Sen’s family desperately clinging to the past glory of the samurai, because desperate characters do irrational things. I also liked that because Sen’s father essentially wants to start a whole new samurai rebellion from scratch. The stakes feel much more like a personal vendetta than a political movement. I think this decision fit better with the story I was trying to tell — I’m more interested in talking about the mistakes of one family who happened to be samurai rather than commenting on the samurai at large.”
― Kylie Lee Baker, Interview, Polygon
What booksellers are saying about Japanese Gothic
- Japanese Gothic is a beautifully written, atmospheric, and haunting novel blending horror, historical fiction, and mystery into one truly captivating story. I found myself sucked into both Lee and Sen’s individual POVs immediately, eager to learn about both of their lives and what brings them together…Baker is able to jump from descriptive, lyrical prose to gruesome, terrifying scenes masterfully, while at the same time, keeping you invested in two very different people and their journeys without losing momentum. I ate it up and feel like I could talk about the symbolism, the reveals, and the ending for both characters for hours.
― Sarai, Spellbound Bookstore in Sanford, Florida | BUY
- I am haunted by this story – trapped in its hazy despair, the threads of death woven through each page, the crushing weight of time and boxes and underwater graves. I am trapped in its pages, in the house behind the sword ferns. You want heavy, emotional gothic? This is it. You want unreliable narrators, spiraling depression, trauma, and deaths that echo across time? Bam. Right here. Japanese Gothic is a gorgeous blend of horror, mythology, and science fiction.
― Rachel, Friendly City Books, Columbus, Mississippi | BUY
- This book is beautiful, and sad, and I finished it in one sitting. A true Gothic tale, complete with a creepy house and ghosts literally in the walls. Baker crafts her story so well, weaving and blurring timelines together until you can’t figure out who is haunting what. And that ending – WOW. Real contender for my favorite book of 2026.
― Meagan, Righton Books, St Simons Island, Georgia | BUY
- Wow, you know a book is good when you’re left speechless. I can definitely see myself rereading this in the future just to dive into the story a bit more!
― Jordan, A Novel Romance, Louisville, Kentucky | BUY
- Japanese Gothic is a blood soaked slice of a blade too fast; a read-in-one-sitting experience that chills you to the hilt. Superb in every way.
― Dominic, Book + Bottle, St. Petersburg, Florida | BUY
About Kylie Lee Baker
Kylie Lee Baker is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Keeper of Night duology and The Scarlet Alchemist duology. She grew up in Boston and has since lived in Atlanta, Salamanca, and Seoul. Her writing is informed by her heritage (Japanese, Chinese, and Irish), as well as her experiences living abroad as both a student and a teacher. She has a BA in creative writing and Spanish from Emory University and a master’s of library and information science degree from Simmons University.
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I know a lot of fairy tales.
Like I cut my teeth on them. I grew up reading lots of fairy tale collections, and I realized I could only with difficulty think of fairytales where women were friends, where women talk to each other, and where they weren’t antagonists to each other in some way. I know they’re there, but the fact that I could reach for 10 stories of women waiting for rescue or women waiting to be chosen or women seeking husbands or, you know, that sort of thing instead of a story of women setting out together to have adventures—which is really what I wanted to tell my 7 year old niece who is asking me for a fairy tale— It was very disturbing to me, and I just remember in that moment thinking I’m just going to make something up. I’m gonna make something up because I really want her to know that there is room in fairytales for girls to be friends.
I hope I don’t give too much away, but I was quite inspired by Witness, with Harrison Ford amongst the Amish. I was really interested in this idea of a gangster amongst peacemakers, which is really what Witness is. I find that really fascinating. I became interested in Celtic Christianity because it was very revolutionary at the time in ways that we slightly forget. This was a world of utter warlordism, a very, very violent world and it was pagan. All of that was predicated on the idea that it was good to be strong and kill people. If gods were with you, that’s what would happen. If gods weren’t with you, you’d be weak. The idea of a religion that was founded on the idea that you might want to be weak, or you might want to be humble, was completely insane to these people. I mean, they looked at it and just went, “You’re mad! What are you talking about?”
“Why was Anne Boleyn executed? This was a question I asked myself when writing The Beheading Game, in which Anne Boleyn wakes up after her own execution, escapes from her grave in the Tower of London, sews her head back on, and goes on a revenge quest to kill Henry VIII before he can marry his next wife, Jane Seymour. Legally, the answer is she was executed because she was convicted of the crimes of treason, adultery and incest, but most historians today agree those charges were probably false. So, how did Anne go from being a queen consort, steps from the seat of English power, to climbing the steps to the scaffold in a matter of months? Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most likely, and, although I came to many answers to this question during my research, all of them circled around one central theme: misogyny.”
“When we think of environmental disaster or climate change, we often think of catastrophic events—the Californian or Australian wildfires, deadly floods in Bangladesh or Pakistan, a destructive typhoon or hurricane. When events like those becomes the point of focus, we stop thinking about other kinds of destruction and degradation. I wanted to find a way to reveal what Rob Nixon called slow violence. I didn’t want the major catastrophes to entirely dominate the novel; I wanted to bring slower instances of change to the foreground.”
“I am endlessly fascinated by sexuality—it’s almost embarrassing how much it shows in my published works. Similarly, I’m always exploring grief and the loss of innocence. Writing 200 Monas felt like a fun way to explore both simultaneously. The intersection between grief and sex somehow reminded me of being young, when the death of my father coincided with my spring awakening; I was always seeking refuge in romantic relationships, sexy films, and perverted conversations with my friends. I wanted to write something that captured that dichotomy in some way, this idea of being sad and horny at the same time.”
