Published by Berkley on January 17, 2023
Format: Audiobook
Source: Scribd
Pages: 419
Goodreads
Also by this author: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
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…
Ok, so my second book by Grady and whilst I thought this was soooooo much better than The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires I think I might have to admit I am not on the Grady train. I still have one more book by him to read, and I do have FOMO for the others so I am sure I will read them but he is not an author I would rush out and buy. I wanted horror, paranormal, and ghost stories, it’s what I am really in the mood for, and whilst I thought I would get that with this book….I didn’t.
You can’t take this book seriously because it’s not a serious book. The puppets or dummies or whatever they ended up being by the end, were a bit creepy and the narrator did a fab job with Pupkin and this added to the overall creepiness. But I wasn’t terrified as promised by the tagline. I did however finish it very quickly because despite the middle becoming a bit slow (and me wanting to DNF at one point), there was something a bit addictive about this book and I wanted to know how it ended and maybe Pupkin wanted me to know his story.
I was surprised about how emotional this book went to be. It was much more than meets the eye. The relationship of Mark and Louise was great to see how that developed as the book went on, and how it became so fractured in the first place – the opening scenes where they were fighting on the lawn over the will did have me chuckling. However, what I thought of both characters at the beginning, I didn’t by the end. As I discovered what happened to them, and the entire bigger picture, I began to see things in a new light.
There was a lot of humour, laugh-out-loud, and tongue-in-cheek and I think that is how I will have to view his books. If I want a serious book, or something scary, don’t go to him. If I want something campy, addictive, and a lot of fun with gore and potential horror then this is where I will go. I guess if anything this book has given me back a bit more mojo because I was addicted and I needed to know how it would end. I just didn’t want to go to those woods. Grady sure as hell knows how to tell a story!
This book has done NOTHING for my distaste and fear of puppets and dolls – creepy!!! In fact, it’s added to it!
Until next time xxx
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
nsfordwriter says
I have to admit I DNFed both this and Southern Book Club! But I thought The Final Girl Support Group was very good.