How to Sell a Haunted House

Grady Hendrix can write a strange and entertaining book.

After Louise's parents die in a car accident she comes home to her childhood house to make arrangements. On top of having to bury her parents she has to navigate her strained relationship with her brother, Mark. Worse of all, though, she has to handle the house that is filled to the brim with dolls and puppets her mom made that always gave both Louise and Mark a bad feeling.

First, I want to say that I love Grady Hendrix's writing. His stories are always incredibly entertaining and filled with comedic moments within the horror. My favorite aspect of this book is the terrible family dynamic and how it centers around Louise and Mark, but you slowly get to see how the rest of the family fits into it. It's heartbreaking and maddening at the same time.

This book was a rollercoaster of not wanting to put it down to then not wanting to pick it up and, sadly, it fell flat for me. The biggest thing that I disliked was that I felt like there were too many moments in the book that I felt like gave too much detail that just wasn't needed. I was keeping an open mind thinking that it would come around and tie-in throughout the book but it never did. It was just setting up the characters which could have been done with less in my opinion. I also just didn't vibe with horror parts of the story until the very end which redeemed a lot of it for me. Though that is definitely more of a personal view and I can see how many people would find this book terrifying.

Overall, it has a good backbone to the story and ended well but the pacing and good chunk of the basis of the story didn't do it for me.