I purchased this book for my own personal collection. I borrowed the audiobook from the library.
Publisher:Berkley / Penguin Audio
Published: January 17, 2023
Summary:
Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.
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…
My thoughts:
This is the first book I’ve read by Grady Hendrix and it was bananas!!! I don’t read a lot of horror books but I’m so glad I gave this one a try. It was also the book one of my IRL bookclubs picked and I’m so glad they did…we all had such different experiences with this book and it was great being able to talk it through.
I’m from the generation of Cabbage Patch Kids, so a book about creepy dolls and puppets kinda freaked me out but I still found this one to be a book I couldn’t walk away from. I think the fact that it wove a story around grief and how we all deal with it really made me like the book overall. I come from a large family and so I am always intrigued by family dynamics and I loved the way Hendrix portrayed that here. Even in a small family, dynamics play a part. Louise and her brother didn’t get along but there was a reason for that and as the story progresses we start to see some of those secrets come out and we learn the reasons for that friction between the siblings.
This book is weird and a little out there at times but overall I have to say I enjoyed this one despite the fact I will now definitely look at dolls and puppets in a totally different light.
Audio thoughts:
I ended up listening to this one and the audio was good. The voice of the puppets will be haunting me for quite some time, I’m sure! Narrators Jay Aaseng and Mikhaila Aaseng really did a great job bringing this book to life. Their pacing and intonation was spot and they both infused just the right amount of emotion and tension into their voices as needed.
