I tend to really enjoy gothic fiction, and this is such a classic I had to check it out! I really enjoyed the writing style and the atmosphere of this book, and the slow buildup of tension. The settings in particular were incredibly vivid and really gave me everything I wanted for this isolated country manor. I also found the unnamed protagonist's relationship with her husband both fascinating and compelling, though not really in a romantic sense and more like something I'd keep in a petri dish. I wasn't necessarily surprised by the twists and turns, but I imagine that's in part because there's nearly 100 years of gothic fiction that's been shaped by Rebecca in one way or another that I'm already familiar with. There's also a lot of fascinating gendery things going on here, especially surrounding what is or isn't conventional femininity.

I can see how some people would find the main character annoying with how young and insecure she is, but I enjoyed getting to read from her perspective and felt like she really captures her age range well. I also loved that she's genuinely kind of weird, like the way she often drifts off into extremely detailed fantasies like all the time and is prone to catastrophizing. Rebecca herself is also one of the key figures in this book, despite dying before the novel, and her impact over every aspect of Manderley is just so palpable.

In terms of overall spookiness or outright horror, Rebecca has some fantastic, chilling imagery, though I would say it's on the more subtle side over all.  For me, though, the real horror was in

this relationship the narrator has not only trapped herself in but given everything for! Without being familiar with du Maurier as an author outside of this one book, it's hard for me to tell how intentional this is (though I'm leaning towards intentional), but the start of the book becomes absolutely chilling when in the context of Maxim's murder of Rebecca. Sure, if we trust what he says, Rebecca was a horrible, manipulative woman failing to live up to every single gendered expectation placed on her, but the fact is we only have Maxim's perspective on her. She can't speak for herself, and so the narrator completely trusts Maxim's viewpoint, and hardly even cares that he murdered a woman because she's so happy that he never loved his previous wife at all! It just makes her own position as Maxim's wife feel so precarious even though she certainly views herself as having a happy ending, even though she basically has no life outside of Maxim. I was also continuously so frustrated with how little Maxim communicated with her, and the fact that he then has the audacity to be surprised that she assumed that he... loved his first wife... who everyone says he loved. That drove me up the wall.

This was just such an interesting and atmospheric read! I think the ending was slightly less spooky than I hoped it would be, but I am also a horror fan in general while this book leans more firmly into the gothic romance category. Definitely worth a read!