While elements are certainly strong, I think I relied too heavily on its comparison to IBGITD going in. I was hoping for a deep dive into Francis' psyche and the relationship between him and Vera. Instead, the supernatural hook overwhelmed these issues and many of the questions I had went largely answered. Just Like Home is eerie and unsettling and Gailey is undoubtedly a skilled suspense writer, but for me the story felt a little disjointed, the ending a bit rushed, and ultimately I was left wanting a little something more. Three stars as the first two halves were great..

Just Like Home was one of my most anticipated summer reads, and unfortunately, it just didn’t work for me. The book started out strong and the pacing worked throughout the entire story — it was a perfect mixture of slow burn and suspense. I also enjoyed the social commentary on how as a society, we feel like we deserve a front row seat to other people’s trauma and pain. I found this aspect of the story extremely relevant. However, not much else worked for me regarding the storytelling. I found Vera to be an annoying protagonist, and the other characters were very one-dimensional. Daphne, Vera’s mother, had great potential to be a memorable villainess, but she was completely underdeveloped. Additionally, while I typically enjoy dual timelines, it just didn’t work in this book and added more questions than answers. Finally, without giving too much away, the story ended with supernatural and setting elements that left me confused about what I had just read. This book is definitely not for everyone, but it might be your cup of tea if you are looking for supernatural horror that leaves you questioning everything!

I was in the mood for a spooky read so I grabbed this. It had me until about 2/3 of the way through… and then the climax and ending? The bulk of the story was solid, hence the 3 stars. No spoilers, but if you want a true horror story, this one won’t be the one.

loved this ! From the beginning I couldn't put it down, the writing was phenomenal and I just found the story so intriguing. this is fantastic for people who love thrillers. this reminded me of haunting of hill house.

I went in knowing nothing about Just Like Home - only that it’s written by Sarah Gailey who never disappoints!

Vera returns home to Crowder House to care for her estranged mother in her final days. The old home is a familiar comfort to Vera despite that fact that her father, a serial killer, held many victims there. There are still secrets in Crowder House, a house haunted by long ago events, waiting for Vera.

This was a brilliant story with a high creep factor that had insanely strong Shirley Jackson vibes!
Huge thanks to Tor Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Just Like Home was released July 19, 2022.

This is a gothic-flavored haunted house novel, so it includes all the vibes. If you loved the ghosty elements of Crimson Peak, pick this up!

“Slowly, painfully, the bed lifted far enough off the floor to release the thing that lived beneath it.”

Synopsis: “Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories ― she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there, beneath the house he'd built for his family. 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? There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.

Personal review: 3.75

Gothic fiction? Haunted house? True crime podcast worthy story line? Serial killer?! Sign me up! This book was a rollercoaster, but don’t be like me and stay up late into the night reading it - the creepy prose will leave you just like the main character Vera - unable to sleep! Although the plot took me quite a few chapters to get into, when I made it over that haunting hump, there was no turning back. This book was like an onion, the more I read, the more layers the author peeled into the characters, their dynamics and the “why” behind their actions. I very much enjoyed this story and the unpredictable ending that came along with it! Thank you @netgalley and @torbooks for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

I have always really enjoyed Sarah Gailey's books and was really excited about this one! It definitely is less sci fi and more horror than The Echo Wife and Upright Women Wanted, but this was really enjoyable.

It actually gave me White Smoke by Tiffany Jackson vibes, but adult and also more supernatural? It was very different that I expected, but I really liked going in a bit blind and just learning the story along with the characters.

I'll for sure be recommending this book to horror/scifi readers. 3.5 stars rounded up

This book didn't work for me. I found the plot moved slowly and at times I wanted to DNF it. However, I stuck with it until the end and found it to be a creepy horror story that I just couldn't get into.

Just Like Home succeeds because of one very important thing: originality. No matter what you guess about what’s really happening, there’s pretty much no way you can guess the entire thing.

It was also nice to see rolls reversed, but I can’t say anything else without giving spoilers. 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

Vera's dying mother has called her home to the house her father built, the house where her father tortured his victims in the basement under Vera's bedroom. And, like a good daughter, Vera goes to help her. But her mother refuses any help with her personal care, insisting that she's made arrangements for that. Vera's job is to sort through closets and cupboards, digging through what was left after the murder investigations. Her mother has rented rooms to a series of artists and writers who have pillaged the place for inspiration and bits and pieces to add to their work. There's one still living in an outbuilding. While Vera's mom will barely speak to her, this guy wants to pry for details. This book is a slow burn that takes some incredibly creepy turns. I don't know what I was expecting, but that ending definitely wasn't it!

My attention was caught by Sarah Gailey when I read The Echo Wife. I enjoyed that one a good deal, but it did not prepare me for how much I was going to get sucked in by Just Like Home! Their writing is an absolute force. The book was genre bending and intriguing and I loved falling down the rabbit hole that was this novel. The story packed a punch, and while some of the subject matter could make this a little touchy for some readers, I found it to be interesting and creepy and exciting.

Just Like Home: Sarah Gailey Exorcises Our Grisly Obsession with True Crime

At this point, you know when you’re being told a Sarah Gailey story. There will be familial relationships fractured along fault lines, often involving one member shut out of another’s world (Magic for Liars). A house often figures prominently, either a childhood home or one that never got the chance to house a family but has instead been filled with blood and trauma (“Haunted”). And even before the blood, there is the equally impactful trauma of adolescence shaped by an unyielding and unforgiving parent so determined to remake the child in their image that they don’t care if doing so breaks them (The Echo Wife).

Over the past several years, it’s been fascinating to watch Gailey refine the blueprint for a domestic thriller with a supernatural twist, culminating in their latest horror novel that gets beneath your skin before you even realize how deep it’s gone. Examining a serial killer’s legacy through his widowed wife, estranged daughter, and abandoned house, Just Like Home interrogates the bloodlust of the true crime genre alongside a good old-fashioned haunting.

Killings send Vera Crowder away from Crowder House when she’s barely out of adolescence—specifically, her father Francis Crowder’s salacious murders that took place beneath the floorboards where she and her suburban-with-a-sharp-edge mother Daphne slept. Death brings Vera back in adulthood, but it’s Daphne who is wasting away before her eyes; her final request is that Vera pack up the house and take care of things once she’s gone like a good daughter. Never mind that Vera has never considered herself a good daughter, nor a good person.

Crowder House is not the home that Vera left when she was a teenager: In the intervening twelve years, Daphne has cashed in on their unfortunate infamy by opening up the doors to all manner of strangers who feel entitled to witness Francis’ crimes, and to the writers and artists who would scavenge upon whatever creative morsels are left. Crowder House has become part museum and part artists’ residency, so trod upon and carved out as to be almost unrecognizable.

Almost. As Vera settles in for her grim duty as only daughter, she discovers that her childhood fears of something scraping and scratching beneath the bed are alive and well. And now that she knows how awful other people can be, she may be more open to investigating whether there is actually a monster in her room, or whether Vera is filled with the same greasy, choking darkness that’s in her bloodline…and if her superstitious habit of snapping four times won’t succeed in driving that darkness away.

Other writers would stay in their lane between true crime or haunted house story, but Gailey grabs both plots by the throat and binds them together in an unsettling, deliberately related tale. From the first, thorough tour through Crowder House, they establish the repetitive, almost sing-song language of the house that her father built, in all its literal and figurative applications; even though Francis exists only in Vera’s memories, he’s never not present.

Such a claustrophobic setting is extremely effective in making sure the reader never forgets who exactly orbits throughout Crowder House. There’s the awful mundanity of Daphne’s hospital bed taking up the dining room (a detail that will reveal its layered brilliance as the mystery unfolds), and a different sort of haunting in the form of James Duvall, the self-obsessed sculptor who has taken over Francis’ beloved shed as his artistic Airbnb, yet walks through Crowder House as if he owns it. The son of the true crime writer who immortalized a particular version of the Crowder family history, James has wormed his way into Daphne’s final weeks and seeks to do the same with Vera—a greasy parasite who feeds on the lurid facts of the lives lost in that basement.

Yet Gailey resists the temptation to give up too many juicy specifics about Francis’ killings—to the point that, were this a true crime podcast, you’d be leaving two-star reviews demanding more, more, more. But that’s the point: Even that knee-jerk reaction reveals how entitled we readers (and listeners) have become to the gory particulars of the worst day of someone else’s life. At our basest impulses, the way we consume this form of entertainment is not unlike James believing that he, a secondhand source at best, has more of a personal claim to, say, Vera’s father’s unearthed letters than she does.

(But that doesn’t mean that Gailey shies away on very purposely chosen visuals, either. Like the holes. Shudder.)
For what Gailey holds back in grisly murder details, they pull no punches in erecting the true crime framework around Francis’ legacy. Daphne’s decision to open up the house to fans is rendered in straightforward yet disturbing reminders like the layer of plexiglass laid over everything from the family photos on the refrigerator to the paths leading up- and downstairs, to his bedroom and to his basement. Granting outsiders the opportunity to literally walk in Francis’ footsteps both preserves and feeds upon his darkness.

Here’s what’s most incredible: the Francis of Vera’s flashbacks sounds like an absolute sweetheart. Not in the “but Ted Bundy seemed so charming” way, but like an attentive husband (even if he rarely got it right with his grim, tense wife) and a doting father. From what child Vera glimpses and overhears, Francis is more concerned with life than with death; all of his actions are for the sake of letting in light, not succumbing to darkness. This is the cleverest element of Just Like Home: It seems clear, beyond even Vera’s bias, that Francis was, at least where she was concerned, a good man.

But that doesn’t change what he did. And just because Daphne is nearing the end of her natural life doesn’t mean that she gets exonerated for how she condoned Francis and punished Vera. Gailey weighs these uncomfortable truths side by side, and the scales never quite balance as Vera catalogs what’s left of her childhood home and exhumes new mysteries: Is the house actually haunted, or is this Vera’s childhood imagination and traumas resurfacing in an old familiar space? Did Francis intentionally nudge her toward unearthing his work, or was he trying to keep an eye on the same tendencies he recognized in his daughter? How much did Daphne know, and what is she still keeping from Vera?

The repetitive language can at times feel as if it’s obscuring the actual plot revelations, with the effect of a seasoned reader of the subgenre able to guess at some conclusions before Vera reaches them. But that doesn’t mean there’s some neat explanation for everything going on within the walls of Crowder House—on the contrary, there are multiple overlapping issues that raise more questions than they answer by the time you close the book. Trained as we are to crave the clear narrative arc of a true crime tale (even an unsolved one), it’s a refreshingly messy resolution.

4 Stars. I ended up enjoying this more than I thought and closer to my original expectations. This is a story about a young woman whose mother is dying so she goes back home to say goodbye and to help get the house up for sale. It just so happens that the house is the house of a famous serial killer… her father. This is a dark psychological drama /horror book and because you are in the house of a serial killer, you never know what could be hiding around the next corner.

When I first heard about this book I was really excited. I have this odd book thing with Sarah Gailey books. All of her books look so good to me, which isn’t the odd thing. I love how she writes YA and adult, sci-fi, magic, LGBTQ+, witches, and westerns, she just writes the kind of books I want to read. If you looked on my Kindle you would see Upright Women Wanted, When We Were Magic, and The Echo Wife, all sitting there. How many have I read? Well here’s the odd thing... none but I keep buying her books anyway. I think we all know how our TBR’s grow and sometimes I feel the only books I have time to read are books related to promised reviews. When I saw Gailey had a new horror book out, and Tor was kind enough to let me review it, I thought finally, finally I would be reading a Gailey book for sure. But what did I do when I had it in hand, I kept putting off reading it because of some reviews that while mostly liked the book, though it was slow or that not a lot actually happened. I had such high expectations that I could feel myself getting pretty disappointed. Anyway, I finally read it and realized those reviews in a way were right. This was what I would call a slow moving suspense book. But it was slow moving in a way that still kept me on my toes. I never knew when something would happen so I could never put the book down. And yes, not a lot always happened, but when things did happen, it made them seem really impactful. There was a reason I chose to read this book until 6am yesterday morning because I knew I would get no sleep just wondering what the ending would be anyway. It was not the book I originally expected, but I ended up enjoying it as much as I had hoped to anyway.

I do want to mention that this book is tagged LGBTQ+ because the main character is queer and mentions this to a douchebro character who seems to think his dick can cure her queerness anyway. That is it. This is not a coming out story, or romance, this as a horror/serial killer story.

To be very clear here I will not spoil anything so don’t worry. You might have heard people talk about the ending. I ended up really enjoying it and I’m not surprised that it's something on a lot of people’s minds. While I did guess correctly and see parts of it coming, I’m happy to say that some part of it was a totally surprise. There are parts of the ending you might figure out absolutely, but some of it is almost impossible and I really liked that about it. Let’s just say that wherever Gailey gets some of her ideas, I want a ticket to go visit that place:)

If you are interested in a dark psychological drama, with slow moving suspense and a shot of horror, than give this book a chance. This book is very different and it won’t be for everyone but it really showcased Gailey’s skills and I really enjoyed that ending. I could not be more excited that I took a chance on buying so many of her other books and I can’t wait to read them.

A copy was given to me for an honest review.

I was pretty intrigued by this novel. It’s been a long time since I’ve read horror novels and I missed it.

Vera left her parents’ house a long time ago. Her mother hates her anyway. Yet, as she is about to die, she asks Vera to come home to put everything in order. It’s not easy for our heroine, especially after everything that has happened, but she does it. Facing her mother is the hardest part, but she has no choice. However, this house hides many secrets and Vera will soon realize it. Especially since a guest is determined to take control of this place.

We discover little by little the past of Vera, what happened with her father and with her mother. I must say that I did not expect this. It was an original novel, about a house that holds many secrets, like our heroine’s past. A very intriguing story!

let’s first take a moment to praise the cover of this book - eerie and beautiful. Now for the plot:: I came into this book expecting much more from the mother-daughter relationship. I never expected the creepy sci-fi horror relationship between her mother, father, and this dang house.
Once you knew the father had been up to something, you knew exactly what her was doing in the basement. BUT you never expected exactly what or why he was doing it.

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

Oof, this book is deliciously creepy. I think what I love most about Gailey as a writer—and I love MUCH about them—is their effortless genre flexibility: they have this unparalleled ability to not only dig into the heart of what makes a particular genre, or subgenre resonate but to draw something new and fresh (and in, in its own way, inescapably queer) from familiar bones.

Just Like Home, then, is a gothic flavoured, true crime inspired horror-thriller, which is also a very classic haunted house story. It had moments of reminding me of Sharp Objects and Mexican Gothic, while still being entirely its own thing. The basic premise here is that Vera Crowder after years of a somewhat rootless existence has been summoned back to the house where she grew up to attend her dying mother. The house in question was built for his family by Vera’s loving father, Francis Crowder. Who also happens to be a serial killer, whose crimes came to light when Vera was thirteen years old, and later died in prison.

And before you come at me for spoilers, that is literally in the blurb.

Although, given this is a Sarah Gailey book, it also barely scrapes the surface of what’s going on here, both literally and thematically. Which is hard to talk about in more detail without spoiling the story. I will, however, do my best.

At its heart, I guess, Just Like Home is a “who are the monsters really” type book and I am personally always here for a “who are the monsters really” type book, especially when it’s such a multi-layered exploration of the trope, encompassing familial relationships, romantic relationships, domestic abuse, serial killing, the entitled voyeurism engendered by the popularity of true crime, and—of course—a literal haunted house. The experience of reading the book itself is one of stifling and ever-increasing dread, coupled with an uncomfortable degree of curiosity about Vera, her father, and the past (which is woven into the narrative via present-tense flashbacks). That we are meant to interrogate our own curiosity is, I think, very much part of the point here (especially because, in the wake of Francis Crowder’s death his wife had turned the house into a kind of tourist attraction to his monstrosity) and I ultimately appreciated how willing the story is to deny that curiosity. It might sound like an odd thing to say about a book, one of whose central strands concerns a serial killer, but there’s a delicacy around what is revealed and how, the way the story retains a balance between intimacy and distance around its characters—particularly the prickly, damaged, desperately lonely Vera.

I was going to add that Just Like Home is not a book for the faint-hearted, before realising how pejorative faint-hearted sounds. As if preferring not to wade around in the tarry depths of human nature is somehow a moral failing. Basically, even compared to, say, The Echo Wife—which was also fairly horrifying, but in cool, cerebral kind of way—Just Like Home a dark and visceral read, both in the literal sense, and also in its emotional dynamic. It goes to some Places TM. I’m honestly still processing its heroine, wondering at my capacity for sympathy here, because holy God.

I also think—and this is complicated—there may be people for whom the concept of a serial killer who is also a loving and dutiful father might be inherently distasteful. I’m genuinely not sure if a nuanced approach to serial killers is what the world needs right now (or indeed ever), although I should also note that, while Francis Crowder is allowed to be more than his reputation (and it is important to the themes of the book that he is), he is never glamorised. This isn’t a Netflix Thinks Ted Bundy is hot situation. Also—for whatever fucked up cultural reasons—it makes a mild difference, for me, that Crowder’s victims are all men. Not that I’m claiming it’s okay to serial kill men, but I genuinely believe we are too interested in general in serial killers who solely target women. I mean, that shit goes back to Jack the Ripper. On top of which the serial killing is, of course, feeing into the book’s broader explorations of home, domesticity, gender, and violence.

Ultimately, I recommend Just Like Home wholeheartedly but more carefully than The Echo Wife, simply because of the subject matter. Or perhaps I mean the presentation of the subject matter because one can definitely trace some connections between the two books: an unreliable, complicated protagonist, an intense domestic setting upon which something supernatural/SFnal acts as both reflection and disruption, the inescapability of power, gender and society. In a strange way, though, and this might say more about me and the means by which I’m willing to accept expressions of tenderness, Just Like Home felt a little less bleak than The Echo Wife. But the journey is darker, and bloodier, and its horror seems less detached (then again, Evelyn’s job in The Echo Wife is devastatingly unpleasant): so, you know, assess your own comfort before diving in.

As a kind of conclusion/sidebar, one of the on-going meta-jokes about haunted house stories is “why don’t they just leave?” There’s quite a famous Call of Cthulhu (the roleplaying game, I mean, not the story by racist Uncle Howie) scenario called The Haunting. I don’t remember the details super well, but my partner ran it for me and some friends once—and I think the basic deal is that you’re sent by someone (? An estate agent?) to investigate a house in Boston that is rumoured to be haunted, making it hard to rent/sell. There’s all kinds of shenanigans as you wander around including a bed that tries to throw you out of the window. I think, once you’ve been brutalised by the house, you can go and research it or something, and it turns out there’s a something-or-other in the basement that throws telepathic knives at you. Anyway, for maximum lulz I always roll my CoC characters randomly, and I’d ended up with someone incredibly rich and incredibly stupid, so I’d decided to play—in essence—Bertie Wooster, alongside which I’d put a lot of my points into hot air ballooning because I thought it would be funny. Needless to say, I spent the whole scenario watching my friends’ characters getting attacked by furniture and otherwise traumatised, going “why don’t we just leave? We could just leave? I’m very rich, we don’t need this job. I could have a hot air balloon here in thirty minutes. Say the word.”

Where I’m going with this daft anecdote is: above all else, Just Like Home is not only a fascinating take on the haunted house story, it presents a gloriously twisted and, to me, kind of appealing reason for its protagonist to stay.

Very solid modern haunted house book! Kept me guessing until the end, had some genuinely spooky bits, realistic characters - I just really enjoyed it very much.

I spent the majority of the time reading Just Like Home wondering “what the actual heck am I reading?!”

It was a fast paced page turner. Vera returns to her childhood home, the home where father built, because her mother called her on her death bed. The mother who turned her back on her.

The story is tore through two different time periods: young Vera and current Vera. Current Vera is clearly struggling with going home and has an extremely complicated relationship with her mother. Also, the house might be haunted. We learn through glimpses of young Vera what exactly happened to Vera’s father, and the root of her mothers complex relationship.

But then it got weird. I thought I had the ending called..: but then the “horror” part of the book kicked in - I think? It wasn’t so much horrifying/scary as weird. I had to turn back pages and re-read things to fully grasp what was happening - which was a lot. It was interesting… but I’m not really sure what even else to say about it.

This book is spooky, haunting, and dark dark dark! “Just Like Home” is a twisted story of the daughter of a serial killer - and Sarah Gailey mastered her craft!