Review – How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (3/5 stars)
Reading Level:Adult
Genre: Horror
Length: 423 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Release Date: January 17, 2023
ASIN: B09JVY9QZ3
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed ebook from library
Rating: 3/5 stars
“When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed a copy of this on ebook from my library.
Thoughts: I did find this curious enough to finish but didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped to. Previous to reading this book I had read Hendrix’s “Horrostor” which I found incredibly amusing and his “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” which I didn’t enjoy as much. This book was okay.
Louise finds out her parents have died and is forced to leave her young daughter with her ex while she goes back to Charleston to deal with it. She arrives to find her deadbeat brother, Mark, trying to clear out the whole house and sell it without her involvement. That is when she finds out she inherited all her mother’s art in the house, her mother the puppeteer whose art litters every corner of the house and she finds out the house might just be very haunted.
This is mainly a horror book, although it also delves into family issues of Mark and Louise trying to find some common ground together. If you are creeped out by dolls/puppets I wouldn’t recommend it. A big portion of this book is about evil/possessed dolls and puppets. I in particular do not like dolls and puppets (I had a mom that collected dolls and it always freaked me out), so I almost stopped reading this on a number of occasions.
The story wanders quite a bit. We move from Loiuse’s present back to events in her past. Then about halfway through the book we start hearing from her brother as well. The whole thing feels a bit disorganized. Then things gets a bit goofy as theories about how loving something makes it sentient are presented to the reader, The Velveteen Rabbit is referenced multiple times.
Like with “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires” I found some of this darkly funny but also thought some of it was just out-right unpleasant and didn’t enjoy all the meanness in here. A lot of the story feels very contrived as well. Things did wrap up okay though.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was okay, I finished it. I liked watching Mark and Louise find some common ground as siblings. I did not enjoy the creepy haunted puppets and thought the explanation behind their existence felt pretty far-fetched. I don’t really know why I keep picking up books by Grady, they are always just so-so. I guess I always find the premise intriguing but in the future I will probably steer clear.
