How to Sell a Haunted House

book 4/30 ✅
How to Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
3/5 ⭐️

How To Sell A Haunted house tells the story of Louise and Mark, a pair of estranged siblings who have never really seen eye-to-eye about things, and what happens after the death of their parents.

Okay - y'all, I almost didn't finish this book. I had a tough time getting into this because of the author's writing style, which is part of the reason why I think I didn't like Final Girl Support Group. The novel had its moments - fast-paced action, suspense, and tenderness. For me, I felt like I had to power through a lot for things to “get good,” but once things picked up, it was a wild ride to the finish. 

Louise and Mark are siblings that haven't lived near each other for most of their adult lives, but come together when their parents die unexpectedly in a car accident. Their complicated relationship adds to the tension when they enter their parents home that is FILLED with dolls and puppets that are decidedly creepy. From there the story unfolds with one twist and turn after another that kept me glued to the pages. The first Grady Hendrix book I read was The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, and I loved it. This second read by this author did not disappoint! This was the first book that truly scared me in quite some time, but in all the best ways.

I'm not a horror reader but I wanted to dip into this genre to see what I feel about it. I chose this book as a Halloween read as I've heard it would be “spoopy” and not full on horror. It turns out I really don't like the spirits/ghosts type of stories, and this one has haunted puppets and dolls and it was not interesting. Maybe too predictable? And I got tired of all the family drama behing it. It wasn't for me.

In How to Sell a Haunted House, Grady Hendrix has turned the banal and the ordinary into something existentially terrifying. This is Hendrix's modus operandi. Often, the most mundane things: an IKEA shopping store, book clubs, one's best friend, or the idea of a family home in his hands, turn twisted, greasy, full of spikes and tendrils, patiently waiting to dig its way into the mind of his helpless readers. Grady Hendrix writes the best horrors. 

“wishing harder than she'd ever wished before that for just sixty seconds someone would hold her, but no one holds moms.” 

One of the overarching features of Hendrix's stories is the flawed characters. People are imperfect, gray in emotions and deeds, sometimes heroic, and other times cowardly. Unless you seek a novel where the good is always good, and the evil is easy to spot, stories and characters are complex three-dimensional creations. As a reader, horror is more effective when I can empathize or am repulsed by characters past their inherent “goodness” or “badness.” Hendrix capitalizes on the grayness of characters to effectively tell his stories. 

The premise of How to Sell a Haunted House is that Louise's parents have died. Louise, a mom, has had to leave her child with her ex to travel to Charleston to tie up familial loose ends. One of the loose ends is her childhood home, her father, an academic, and her mother, a woman obsessed with dolls and puppetry. They both loved and knew her best, and the raw pain and emotional deadness from losing a parent are shown well. It feels like Louise has been scooped out emotionally, but she still has to go on living, making decisions, and dealing with what is left of her family, her brother Mark. Mark has his own battles to fight. While Louise left, he stayed, and there is contempt there. 

“But she didn't have a choice. She would have to handle whatever happened. There was no such thing as too much. There was just more and more, and her limits didn't matter. Life didn't care. She could only hang on.” 

As it turns out, selling the house and dealing with their crumbled relationship will be much more complicated and terrifying than either thought. 

There is something unnerving about dolls. It could be because they represent us and who we think we are or the uncanny valley effect, which is the reaction to how human an object looks while not being quite right. Often, it involves revulsion and unease. Some stories capitalize on this trait, Like Annabelle and Chucky. On the one hand, they are toys, harmless objects of play and joy; on the other hand, there is something not quite right about Annabelle. Hendrix took this idea and turned it up to 11. Puppetry is creepy, generally. But obsession and puppetry are so much worse. Think puppets in every room, hanging from the ceiling, their strings lightly brushing your face as you walk under them, their glass eyes staring at you but not seeing. Eyes, everywhere. Hendrix probably sat back in smug satisfaction at the horror practically dripping off the pages. 

“This is where we grew up. It's not The Shining.” “It's Shining-adjacent,” Mark said in the gloom.” 

Now take those puppets, eyes everywhere, and give them life. Stick them in a house and put two broken people in there with them. The puppets are unhappy with Louise and Mark's choices; they have access to tools, their teeth, knives, and a propensity for mischief. Voila, How to Sell a Haunted House. 

It is shocking how scary How to Sell a Haunted House is. It isn't one thing, but the combination of writing, characters, dolls, and atmospheric worldbuilding that creates a sense of malice and revulsion on every page. And it only builds as the book nears the last third. Is this my favorite Hendrix book? It's hard to say; they are all different and well done, but this one is the most atmospheric. 

“Louise tried to think of how to explain death to a puppet.” 

Read this novel if you are looking for a frightening time, hate puppets, or want to immerse yourself in a Hendrix world. It is worth the scare and the time to read it. God, I hate puppets.

Grady Hendrix revolves his haunted house story around a pair of adult siblings who are dealing with the death of their parents and their own strained relationship. It is a strong character and relationship story with enough scary bits to satisfy horror fans as well.

I found Lousie and Mark to be relatable in some ways (Louise's desire to get away from home, her drive, Mark's frustrations and aimlessness) but they were also unlikeable (Louise's incredible denial and neurotic controlling behavior, Mark being a petulant dick). We saw most of the story through Louise's eyes and at times her attitude made me want to reach through the book and shake her.

There are little bits of humor, mostly in the dialogue, which Hendrix is great at. With the scary scenes, at times I realized what I was imagining could be quite absurd and silly, given the nature of the “items” that were possessed.

Great entertainment, escapist but smart.

 i loved the exploration of sibling relationships and grief. the grief and sudden death of both parents was the true horror for me because that's a great fear for me. grady hendrix always has this humor and horror balance i love and also some really disgusting scenes but i'm not a huge paranormal horror fan. especially not haunted dolls so the actual horror element of this for me fell super flat. i get it and i'm sure plenty of people will enjoy it and while grady has a humourous tone in almost all his books, the haunted doll was giving juvenile and not in a good way i enjoyed.

Fun and funny horror. It took a while to really get started, but once it did, it was pretty good. It's a little long and meandering in parts, which led to a definite drop in any suspense that got built up. Adding an extra half a star for the Audiobook version. Hearing Pipkin's voice upped the creepiness factor, for sure.

I enjoyed this book AND it helped me realise what I don't like when reading horror stories!

Pros: family themed horror, nice plot twists (even though at the end I anticipated some of them), good pacing, cursed object theme
My personal cons: too much explicit violence/brutality, drawn out action scenes where I couldn't really keep up with who was doing what where

I say these are my personal cons, because they were actually well written, I just realised that I enjoy the atmosphere and scenery of horror stories much more than explicit violence and gore in them. However if you enjoy horror stories, where you can read word by word how the enemy is trying to kill the protagonists in an action scene, then this is for you!

I still give it 4*, enjoyed it nevertheless