A review by thatgirlinblack
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

“Before Ira Levin, horror always happened somewhere else. Regular ordinary people were forced to pack their luggage and kennel their dogs 
and had to leave their homes and schlep seemingly forever to Transylvania, to Manderlay, to the House of Usher, or Hill House, or the Bates Motel. … Yes, everyday life was all well and fine until Ira Levin brought the requisite haunted castle into the Upper West Side of Manhattan.” (From the book’s forward by Chuck Palahniuk.) 

The foreboding grows in this tale of a couple making a new home and family in a storied New York apartment. As an introverted millennial survivor of the Covid-19 quarantines of the 2020’s and onward, I’d suggest the first real horror is having over-“friendly” neighbors unexpectedly drop in and stay however long they fancy 😛 

But things quickly get very serious when Rosemary suffers a rape. Thereafter she is with child and the weirdness just ramps up to 11, with smelly flowers tucked into a necklace, yucky green smoothies, concerningly mysterious deaths, a book on witchcraft, and most annoyingly, Rosemary’s husband NOT being on her side. She feels crazy, as one would with her neighbors, doctor, and husband telling her she is. That’s the biggest nightmare—that she can’t trust her own husband. Men continue to be the biggest threat to women smh. 

Perhaps because it’s one of the earlier witchcraft/satanism horror books that have recently permeated the genre, the march to the inevitable simply plods onward to doom. The ending is picture-perfectly horrific: a mother amidst the fallout of her life in shambles. 
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