Do any of you remember those creepy AI TikTok videos where an AI-generated voice would tell you that you’ve been tasked with looking after a creepy establishment and give you a variety of crazy rules you had to follow if you wanted to live. The rules would be weird stuff like if anyone knocks on the door at a specific time then don’t answer because it’s not them, don’t turn on the lights at 5pm… 

Well, The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer is basically that in a book. But, like, in a good way. 

The Caretaker follows Macy Mullins, she’s 22-years-old and has been the legal guardian of her 17-year-old sister since their dad died 3 years ago. After a string of bad luck with jobs, Macy is desperate for money which is why she starts looking for jobs on craigslist. She finds a 3-day job being the caretaker of an isolated house and while it seems a little bit off, the money is far too good for her to even consider saying no. 

So Macy heads to the Oregon Coast to spend 3 days cooped up in a stranger’s house where she’s told she must follow the rites or risk the end of humanity. The house’s deceased owner has left her a set of odd rules she must follow. 

1. Don’t let the rabbits inside.
2. Make sure the lights are all kept on between 3 and 4am.
3. If a visitor shows up, hide and don’t speak to them.

But if the phone rings, disregard all of these rules and do whatever the person calling you says.

I don’t usually find books very scary, but there was something about this that just kept me on edge. Every time Macy even suggested she wasn’t going to follow the rules or was getting close to doing something wrong I started to feel genuinely stressed. I couldn’t put the book down because I just needed to know that she was going to figure it out and not mess everything up. I found this book to be so unsettling and eerie. I rarely feel so tense when I’m reading books. 

I’d describe this book as a little bit of a slow burn. I think the beginning of the book is a little slower than the rest of the book but I’m not saying this in a bad way. I actually think it was necessary to build up the tension and make the later parts of the book as scary and stressful as they were. When I finished reading this book I simply just sat there staring at the wall thinking about the ending. Just like Kliewer’s other book, I think the book could lend itself to a sequel due to the way it ends but it’s not something I’d ever actively want.This was a fantastic book and one I’d recommend to both people that liked his previous book We Used to Live Here and those who didn’t.