A lyrically mesmerizing, utterly complex novel about the lives we construct, or the ones we choose to inhabit, House of Beth by Kerry Cullen is a notable debut. On the heels of a rather abrupt breakup and a startling occurrence at work, Cassie finds herself headed back home to New Jersey, her father’s now empty home awaiting her with open arms. Her fast-paced city life is immediately severed and replaced with a slower cadence while Cassie wrestles with her own identity and the significant role that her harm OCD impacts her life. In waltzes her former best friend, Eli, a man who has lost himself following the death of his wife and mother of his two children. It’s a tailor-made lifestyle that Cassie falls into, loving Eli, caring for his children, and becoming the homemaker she is expected to be. But soon, the reverberating waves of Eli’s late wife, Beth, are felt by Cassie to unpredictable results.
In many ways, it feels as though House of Beth is the perfectly subverted Hallmark movie plot in novel form. The big-city girl moves back to her hometown and finds love. How cozy? Yet, Kerry Cullen takes this beloved trope and holds it under a microscope, interrogating the conflicts of self that exist for women through the character of Cassie. Who is she really? What does she actually want and is the ease of comfort lasting enough to be sustainable in the long run? And what are the harmful effects of sacrificing yourself for complacency? What really haunts you?
This subversion of cozy expectations takes many forms, yielding a story truly unlike any other. Sure, there is some shared DNA here with Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, but within Cullen’s modern, realized setting, it feels as though House of Beth takes part in the conversation around current “trad wife” lifestyles. Cassie feels like a timely character who must confront her true needs and desires compared to the comfortability presented to her, the traditional role she “should” follow.
So far, this may sound like a deeply emotional, introspective, but relatively light-hearted affair. And this is where I offer the bleak contrast of mental violence experienced by Cassie through her intrusive thoughts and Beth’s heartbreaking story that slowly unfolds. The juxtaposition of Beth’s sorrow and Cassie’s mental state to the idyllic small town life that so many women aspire to inhabit provides a jarring sense of reality. From Cullen’s poetic prose that describes the most gruesome imagery comes a poignant message of realization and revelation. Despite the things that haunt us (ourselves, the person we wish to be, or the person we used to be) authenticity comes from acknowledgement and acceptance, from shaking hands with the weirdly shaped things that dwell in the corners of our mind who ultimately make us, us.
A dreamlike venture into dark self-interrogation, Kerry Cullen’s House of Beth is an impressive debut that fosters conversations around feminine desires and realities. Cullen expertly paces the plot to leave readers expecting traditional beats of twisted thrillers made popular through untrustworthy female narrators only to completely subvert expectations. It is through this unpredictable journey that an honest conversation begins, a stark look into what it means to be you and only you.
House of Beth by Kerry Cullen is on shelves on July 15, 2025 from Simon & Schuster (all of the thanks to them for the eARC). The audiobook, narrated by Helen Laser, is available for preorder at Libro.fm!
