Old Soul is a horror novel that I had been waiting to come out in paperback, and to be honest I am glad I did not spend the money on the hardcover version because as much as I enjoyed the story, I was disappointed to find this novel not scary at all and the ending REALLY PISSED ME OFF.

Old Soul is about an English man named Jake who, along with a Japanese woman named Mariko, misses a flight in Osaka. Jake and Mariko end up having dinner and drinks together, and as they converse, they discover that they have each lost a loved one in a disturbingly similar manner after their loved ones each crossed paths with the same woman.

Jake begins pulling at the threads left behind by this woman and travels to various countries to speak to other people who have encountered this same, seemingly ageless woman over the last few decades. Meanwhile, the woman in question is in New Mexico, luring her latest victim out into the Bisti Wilderness.

What I like about Old Soul is how the story moves through different perspectives as Jake collects the unsettling testimonies of the other people whose lives have been affected by the woman. It gives vibes of Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. The tension in the story becomes palpable as the narrative cuts back and forth between Jake inching closer to figuring out how to find the woman to stop her from hurting anyone else and the woman struggling in the New Mexico desert to complete her offering.

But what I struggled with is the woman herself. Barker says that when she made her antagonist female instead of male, the character became “much more nuanced and sympathetic” but as I read through the chapters told from the woman’s perspective, I was searching for a reason to sympathize with her and I couldn’t find it. The woman’s experience with misogyny and abuse is not unique, and not every woman who experiences misogyny and abuse ends up being responsible for the deaths of people who do not deserve the type of suffering the woman at the heart of Old Soul brings into their lives. The woman is simply a monster who cares only for herself.

This leads me to my beef with the ending, which made me so upset I wanted to through the book across the room, but I didn’t because it would send my cats scrambling. I am not naïve. I have accepted that most of the bad people in the world are not going to suffer any consequences for their actions and will keep on winning in life. Call it pessimistic if you want, but I call it realistic. However, as much as I can understand why Barker ended her novel the way she did, I do not want this kind of realism in my novels. I want good to triumph over evil so that I can feel good about myself, dammit. That being said, I still think Old Soul is a compelling, suspenseful story.