Our Sister's Keeper (2026) Book Review
Our Sister's Keeper by Jasmine Holmes wants to explore horror through the complicated dynamics of womanhood, marriage, and family, but for me, the ideas behind the story were far more unsettling than the horror itself. There is nothing inherently wrong with a story being influenced by an author's religious beliefs. In fact, religious horror can be incredibly effective when those beliefs are used to explore fear, guilt, control, or the consequences of faith. The problem here is that Our Sister's Keeper doesn't really present itself as religious horror, yet the author's worldview is woven so heavily into the story that it becomes difficult to separate the narrative from the ideas about what a woman should be within a marriage.
Set in 19020s East Cobb, Mississippi, the story follows two women: Thea, a newly married woman who wants to keep her writing career as a priority and Marah, a woman who has been chosen to take on the emotional burdens of the Black men in their utopian town. In East Cobb, the men here are happy and the women help keep them that way. No longer do they have to carry around the burdens of racism or feeling less than. They are able to go to work and provide for their families. But when the "spirits" of the women lost to their pain call out to Thea, she can't help but listen.
There is a very traditional view of marriage and a woman's role that runs throughout the book, and at times it felt less like the story was examining those ideas and more like it was reinforcing them. The result was a story that often felt anti-feminist without necessarily acknowledging that it was making that argument. For a book dealing with women, marriage, and agency, I wanted more complexity and examination of those themes rather than simply presenting certain expectations as inherently correct.
The horror itself was also underwhelming. There are some interesting ideas here, but the execution never really gave them the weight they needed. The scares felt mid, the tension rarely built to anything particularly effective, and some of the supernatural elements didn't feel fully thought out. I kept waiting for the story to really commit to its horror, but it never quite got there.
That became especially frustrating because there is a genuinely interesting book buried somewhere in this premise. A story about women, marriage, faith, control, and the ways society dictates what a woman should be could have been deeply unsettling. Instead, those themes often felt surface-level, while the horror struggled to provide the momentum needed to carry the story.
I also looked into Holmes' other work after finishing the book and learned that this is her debut in horror, while much of her previous writing has been centered around Christianity. That context isn't inherently a problem. Authors can absolutely bring their beliefs and experiences into their fiction but it does help explain why the religious and traditional ideas in this story feel so prominent, even though the book itself isn't necessarily marketed as religious horror.
Ultimately, Our Sister's Keeper wasn't for me. The horror wasn't strong enough to make up for the problems I had with its treatment of women and marriage, and the more I thought about the story, the more uncomfortable I became with what it seemed to be saying beneath the surface. There are plenty of books that explore faith, marriage, and traditional gender roles in fascinating and complicated ways. Unfortunately, this one didn't give me enough complexity or enough horror to make it work for me.
As new horror books are being released more and more, I'm starting to see a trend; one that I don't particularly vibe with. To understand and write horror, you also have to be one who consumes it. Whether that is reading horror books or watching horror movies. Yet, the last three horror books I've read (one I recently reviewed) this year coming from Black women authors are written by authors that are completely new to the genre. It's giving let's take a story and add some scary scenes when horror is so much more than that.
My Rating: ⭐⭐