Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey is a dark, atmospheric thriller that pulls readers into a twisted tale of family secrets and haunting memories. Vera returns to the house where her father, a serial killer, buried his victims—only to find herself confronting the past she’s tried to escape. As tensions rise, a parasitic artist moves in, and eerie notes in her father's handwriting begin appearing, deepening the mystery. Gailey masterfully builds a gothic, unsettling atmosphere, blending psychological horror with suspense. Fans of The Haunting of Hill House and I’ll Be Gone in the Dark will be riveted by this chilling, complex story.

I just couldn't get into this one. It was very hyped up but was not for me. I lost interest early on in the book and couldn't finish.

way grosser and darker than i thought it would be, which is always a delight. i generally have very little interest in true crime, especially when it comes to serial killers. i enjoyed that gailey touched on the followings that these killers often have and how voyeuristic it is for people to enjoy visiting the home of serial killers and to dissect their personal lives. this was also more... humanizing than i expected, which is also a delight. i like questioning myself as i read -- why do i feel bad for this person? when does human end and monster begin? i'm a big fan of gailey's writing though this one had maybe a few too many similies and metaphors.

Ugh - I always find myself intrigued by Sarah Gailey's plot summaries but there is something missing in the execution. I started reading this book like two years ago and put it down and never cared to pick it up again. If it wasn't for my NetGalley rating and an audiobook from the library, I probably would never have gotten to that lackluster ending.

If you are squeamish, this one might not be for you.

TW/CW: Language, toxic family relationships, dying parent, anxiety, toxic friendships, death of parent

*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:
Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back, and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting… but who else could it possibly be?
Release Date: July 19th, 2022
Genre: Horror
Pages: 344
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

What I Liked:
1. Writing style
2. Characters are interesting
3. Creepy scenes
4. The ending was wonderful

What I Didn't Like:
1. Omg James he's absolutely terrible

Overall Thoughts:
{{Disclaimer: I write my review as I read}}

I seriously couldn't stop rolling my eyes all the time that James was trying to tell her he communicate with the house she grew up in and he knew more and then nagging her to see why she never went and saw her murder her father in prison.

Why is Vera even staying when James and her mom are both treating her so horribly??

So this whole time Vera knew what her father was doing because she was watching through the hole in her floor under her bed...crazy!

There really is an "evil" and it's been living inside her mother.

Final Thoughts:
I'll be honest with you I was not the biggest fan of the Echo wife, but this book was fantastic. It was so creepy and had some scenes that kept me holding my breath. The ending of finding out the creature was living inside her mother & had actually killed the rest of her because Vera asked it to end it (without her knowledge) was so good.

I couldn't stand the parts with James but that's because the author did a great job at writing a man I wanted to stab over and over. I hated him so unbelievably. Oh her mother was also quite unbearable too. Horrible humans.

I love that the monster of the story wasn't the real monster but was James and her mother, but the one to save Vera was this thing she thought was out to hurt her. It was a good message that kind of says sometimes we aren't save from our own family.

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Thanks to Netgalley and Tor Publishing & Macmillan Audio for this advanced copy of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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Big fan of Sarah Gailey, loved reading this early--published reviews on Goodreads and bought hardcover and kindle copies!

I'm not sure how to write about this book. It's cozy, yet terrifying. The odd thing is that the terror doesn't lie in murder or monsters or evil, even though all those things are included in the book, it lies in the deeply dysfunctional relationship that Vera's mother has with everyone and how it affects everyone around her. Having known people who loved "someone who is hard to love" and seeing the aftermath of that, this book was deeply emotional for me... And utterly horrifying. The writing is exceptional--somehow feeling smooth and cozy but also creepy and deeply uncomfortable. This book was very intense and a great introduction to the world of horror novels for me.

This cover is deliciously creepy and so was the story! I really loved the dark and eerie atmosphere of this book!

Wow. This book was very interesting. From the summary of it, I thought I would love it. Creepy house, mystery, serial killer. Everything that would be perfect for a fall read.

However, I was greatly disappointed. I would say about 90% of this book was filler. It was SO slow. We follow Vera, the daughter of a notorious serial killer who returns home to take care of her dying mother. Vera has not talked to or seen her mother in 15+ years so coming back to her childhood home is throwing her off a little bit. Also, her mother has rented out the back shed to an artist who is Veras sworn enemies son (why does she hate him so much? We really don’t know other than he wrote a book about her dad).

This book could have been a short horror story? Like I said, a LOT of filler. We only start to get information about her father and the killings until half way into the book. Even then, we really don’t get much information until closer to the very end. No real explanation on what made her father a “famous” killer. It just felt like the author spent SO much time on things that did not matter to the story (ie a whole chapter about going to a furniture store or describing a fishing trip) and I would have rather pulled all that non important stuff out to get to the real story.

The ending was also disappointing. After spending so much time on “fluff” material, it felt like such a let down for THAT to be the ending.

Called back to her childhood home, a place of both fond, loving memories and abject horror, it is fair to say that Vera is going through it in Just Like Home. Sarah Gailey beautifully plays with elements of the Gothic to create a story of horror, family, and belonging. Thanks to Tor Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay.

Gothic novels, and horror stories more generally, thrive in a complicated home-setting. I have mentioned elsewhere how the Gothic genre is a perfect medium for stories about trauma because it plays so beautifully with atmosphere. In Gothic fiction, more perhaps than in any other, everything comes together to create a fertile atmosphere in which the mind can, and often does, break. Depending on the book, this break can fall on the side of clarity, breaking through preconceived notions or lies, or on the side of loss, breaking away from reality or what we generally consider to be acceptable. It is for these reasons that I enjoy the Gothic, but also need to dose out my indulgence in it. The Gothic is soft and warm, deceptively comforting, until it becomes sticky and grasping and hard to get out of. In Just Like Home, Gailey plays with these aspects to tell a chilling tale of childhood, home, and trying to find your place. In my review of The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker, I mentioned how Walker 'employs the drama and heightened atmosphere of the Gothic to tell a story about pain'. While I would argue that Gailey does the same, the emphasis of the novel is more explicitly on horror and twists. This does not mean Just Like Home doesn't have things to say, rather it means you should go into the novel knowing it wants to scare you explicitly, rather than chill you through private realizations.

Vera is standing in front of her childhood home and she feels like maybe she should turn around and leave. But her mother is inside, dying, and she should do the right thing, the thing a good person would do, which is go inside, take care of her, and sort out the house. Vera has never felt at home anywhere the way she did in this house, which her father built for their family. But the house hides secrets, which Vera needs to unravel. She is not the only one, however, as there is also an artist, looking to cash in on the house's reputation. What reputation? Good question, that is one of the mysteries the reader needs to explore throughout Just Like Home. Vera is an intriguing narrator because you realise pretty quickly that whatever difficult or traumatic thing happened in her childhood makes her unreliable. As the novel flits back and forth between the present and the back, it becomes clear that something horrible happened in the house but that, equally, something horrible may be happening right now. Vera, as an unreliable narrator, is at times hard to fully understand, but in a way I found intriguing. Her mother and the artist feel more stereotypically horror side-characters, but they fulfilled their function very well within the narrative. What gripped me most about Just Like Home was the way Gailey built up a sense of dreadful comfort. I don't know if that makes sense, but there is this constant tension between "Vera is in danger" and "Vera is home", which reminded me a little of The Haunting of Hill House in vibe. Just Like Home is definitely more gory than that, however, so bear that in mind if you're not down for copious mentions and depictions of blood, death, etc.

This was my first Sarah Gailey read, but it shall not be my last. The atmosphere she created, as well as the imagery, gripped me throughout my reading. The novel flits back and forth between Vera's perspective now, as she tries to figure out what is wrong with her mother, tries to not care how damaged and abusive their relationship is, and sort through what is left, and Vera as a child, on the cusp of teenagehood and moments away from everything falling apart. The split works well, for the most part, but some of the twists rely on adult Vera not telling us, the reader things, which, if I were her, would never be far from my mind. While sometimes I get annoyed at things being held back, it works here, in part because of the trauma and repression inherent to the Gothic genre. Just Like Home tries to do a lot of things at once. There is the complicated mother-daughter relationship, the worship of a father-figure, the horror of growing up into a woman, the issue of men in general, and the idea of a house and a home. The novel leans into real-life horror as well as Gothic, almost paranormal horror. I enjoyed each of these aspects, but I must admit that around three quarters into the novel, I wondered if all of it was fully necessary or if we were losing some focus. However, all these elements do add up to a very suspenseful and atmospheric novel. I read much of it while traveling back and forth with a friend and I kept updating her on what was happening. Admittedly I don't know how much the other passengers (or my friend) appreciated the goriness of it, but it speaks to how involved I was.

Just Like Home is a great Gothic horror novel which delves into all kinds of different themes. It is on the gorier side of the Gothic genre, but it is also delightfully twisty.

The book does an excellent job of slowly weaving in the details to keep the reader guessing as to the backstory of the main character and her family. It creates a slow, haunting, and eerie atmosphere that hints at the supernatural component while testing the reader's trust in the narrator!

This was a book that was about 100 pages too long (example: a whole chapter wasted on a trip to Ikea to buy a new bed. This could have been done in a page) and tries to do something creative with a haunted house story that just ends up being a big letdown. A paranormal entity lives in the house. Has it always lived there? Why did it draw on the parents to bring in people to kill? So many questions like these and more that never really get answered and just leave you annoyed.

Sarah Gailey continues to be a standout in adult horror. This book is chilling and full of atmosphere. Don't think that the standard "haunted house" narrative is a reason to skip over this book. It is fantastic and rich, while drawing on classic spook factors like ghosts and creepy dolls.

I wanted to like it. It just wasn't for me. The cover is my favorite part of this book. You don't see lots of pink horror/thriller novels.

I was on board with the story the majority of the time. I really liked the flashbacks to our main characters childhood, while growing up with a dad that was a serial killer. At times, the descriptions made me feel queasy, and I could clearly picture what was happening. It was great.

Other times, it was slow and felt like some parts were just filler. I can get past that. No biggie.

But I could not get over the ending. <spoiler> The fleshy being of the house, I could not do. </spoiler> I was fine until that happened. I could not suspend my disbelief that much after all that had been happening. I think if it had been just a ghost, I could have been ok with that. But the fact that it was what it was. <spoiler> And she hugged it.</spoiler> Too much suspending for the last 10% of the book.

Lots of people really like this one, and I think it's just one of those you have to read for yourself. Unfortunately, it wasn't my jam, but I look forward to reading other books by this author!

Very weird but I liked it. Will definitely pick up other Sarah Gailey books.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Initially intrigued me, and went in a different direction than I anticipated. I just didn’t get it. The ending was too metaphorical for me and went above my head. Had to read a ton of reviews and explanations and I still feel a little lost.

Enjoyable read, just not for me.

This one wasn't for me in the end. I like that the premise starts strong, but then kind of tapers off. The serial killer father's storyline loses relevance and kind of makes no sense in the end. I had forgotten several things that were supposed to be of importance. I love the cover though

I was drawn to this book by the gorgeous cover and a promise of a spooky, haunted house story. Unfortunately, I didn't really care for the plot or the characters. Vera is summoned back to her old house by her mom, who lives there alone. Vera's dad just happened to be a serial killer but he's gone now. What's in the basement? Creepy things happen and Vera quickly regrets coming home. I thought I would really like this but I just cannot figure out why I didn't like it at all. Perhaps its just the writing style I didn't enjoy. And for a horror book, there just weren't enough scares for me.

The premise starts strong, but the action falls slightly flat in the middle. In personifying the house, the serial killer father's storyline loses structure and begins to blend in the background. It loses its relevance until the end. However, I had almost forgotten about being scared of Dad by then.

This books has many layers, all of them creepy. I found the critique of true crime fanatics from the perspective of the child of a convicted serial killer to be fascinating.