27. Wild Card: Lute by Jennifer Thorne

List Progress: 4/30

Folk horror is a fairly specific genre with specific signifiers: small European villages, calls back to ancient history, mysterious cults and rituals, discussion of sacrifices and offerings to forces of nature. Lute, the 2022 novel by Jennifer Thorne, wears its inspirations on its sleeves, described as “Wicker Man meets Final Destination” in marketing. But while the original Wicker Man is a classic of folk horror, the Final Destination franchise is a much pulpier affair, a type of horror with very different priorities. Lute doesn’t feel at home with either peer: it lacks the atmosphere and commitment of Wicker Man, but can’t replicate the gory fun of Final Destination, and ends up adrift in its own little island.

The titular Lute is an English island and home of American protagonist Nina. Seven years ago, she was swept up in a whirlwind romance with the young Lord Treadway, and is now the Lady of Lute, complete with two young children. But she has never felt really at home on Lute, partly because she has never experienced The Day, a pagan tithing that the island apparently demands every seven years in return for their general prosperity and strong borders, the latter of which is vital as the Russo-American armies have started marching across Europe. Nina doesn’t believe in The Day and is sure that nothing will happen, but when her husband’s plans for the family to be away are foiled, she has to stay put as seven of her friends and neighbors are chosen to die for the greater good. 

It’s a nicely haunting set-up, but the story is unfortunately overrun with unnecessary subplots and messy dropped threads that distract from the overall product. World War III taking place in Lute’s back yard has surprisingly little to do with the plot, for as much as it is established in the beginning, and the story of Nina’s abusive childhood is set up like a mystery, only for the reveals to come about like shrugs. But the worst offender by far is a romance subplot that seems to only exist in order to give a happy ending, when horror is one of the few genres with almost no expectation of a happy ending. These extraneous threads clutter up the narrative, but considering that almost all of the rest of the action is spent with Nina running back and forth to her neighbor’s houses, maybe they are necessary purely for page count.

If Lute were set up purely as a character piece, Nina’s personal journey, these plot cul-de-sacs might by forgivable, but unfortunately it is very hard to be invested in Nina as a person. She spends the first half of the novel dismissive of everyone’s rising terror about The Day, including her husband’s. It makes sense for her as a skeptic, but she is otherwise posited to be a caring and empathetic person, so her lack of patience for her loved one’s pain is off-putting. She bemoans being the idle rich, but only cares about her children as occasional distractions and hands them off to nannies and neighbors at every turn, even when bodies have started piling up. And when she does have her change of heart and accepts Lute’s ways, it happens very abruptly and quickly, like a switch was flipped in her head and she is now The Best Pagan. It only took an American to come and show everyone how it’s supposed to be done.

And yet despite Nina coming to peace with the customs, the epilogue off the book takes a baffling 180 degree turn, giving the characters an easy out that contradicts the whole journey they all went on. It honestly feels like Thorne lost her stomach at the last moment and couldn’t stand the decision her sympathetic protagonist came to through the course of the story. And at that point, an author needs to step back and ask themselves some serious questions about what story they are trying to tell and why.

Would I Recommend It: No.

(And in the smallest and pettiest of critiques, Nina is a terrible dog owner. Why would you include a trait of your supposedly-likeable lead that she does nothing to control her dog and frequently lets it loose across the entire island, where it not just destroys people’s gardens, but damages protected native bird nesting sites? Human sacrifice is one thing, poor dog training is another!)