I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
I’ve wanted to try Sarah Gailey for a while, after hearing about them on Twitter, and Just Like Home sounded really interesting. And while I didn’t entirely know what to expect, I ended up enjoying (if you can say that about a horror novel) it. It’s rather odd, and it took some time getting into the flow of things, especially some of the prose choices, but it’s odd in a good way and has a subtle eerie buildup that is ultimately satisfying.
I love how the title perfectly sets the tone for what’s to come. While “home” and “family” can be a source of comfort for many, for others who deal with dysfunctional domestic situations, it’s very much the opposite, and I love the way it’s captured here. Vera has a fraught relationship with her mother, and she’s also grappling with the parasitic presence lurking in her childhood home and notes which seem to be written by her dead father.
There’s questions around what happened in the house years ago involving her father, and the mystery of that is well-executed, with twists and turns and surprises.
This is a well-crafted Gothic horror/thriller, both atmospheric and introspective. If you’re a fan of the genre, you’ll probably enjoy this too.

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry but I couldn't finish this book. I tried for weeks but at some point, I just had to admit defeat. I found the prose repetitive and annoying. Her father built the house, she was in the house that her father built I GET IT. Perhaps that being repeated would have made sense if I made it past the 35% mark but alas.

This was a horror book and I definitely saw the beginnings of it in what I read. But it seems this book for more in the author's head than anything else.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC

This is my first Sarah Gailey book and this will not be my last!

In this we follow Vera a young woman who is tasked with going back to her childhood home and clean it up while her mother is dying. There is a layer of mystery over the home and why she hasn’t been back in around a decade.

This book was absolutely fabulous! I was hooked from the very beginning and was spooked through the last 50%.

I loved how Gailey writes the anticipation of a reveal and draws you in during moments of plot building.

I honestly at one point jumped out of my skin while reading because I heard a noise outside my home and the book had me on edge. What a wonderful scary time!

5 stars

This is my first read by author Sarah Gailey and it made for a really interesting and different read.

The blurb reads

“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.

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."



The blurb really intrigued me and I was super excited to read this novel. Vera was a very intriguing character, not overly likeable for me personally but when you hear her back story you kind of understand why she is as flawed as she is.

This novel weaved such an intricate and scary in places story that I found myself a bit freaked out at times. The descriptions were great and Sarah Gailey really paints a picture of Vera's serial killer father.

Do not read this if you are on your own at night as it did really get under my skin. For me it was a bit comparable to the likes of Bly Manor tv show so beware.

Thanks to Netgalley, Sarah Gailey and the publishers for allowing me a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Such an interesting, spooky book. It took me a while to get into it but ultimately I did enjoy it. There were a lot of twists that made me gasp and it really made me scared. The writing style itself wasn't one of my favorites and because of it it did dampen my enjoyment of the book, but still, I had some fun, and I'm excited to see what the author will come up with next. Definitely would recommend.

I've been sitting on this review for a little while and mulling over it. The first half of this book was a solid 4 (even 4.5) star. It was dark, disturbing, made me feel uncomfortable (like a good horror is supposed to do). But THAT ENDING! WTF?!? I still feel a little sore about it.

Vera comes back to the house her father built to take care of her dying mother. The house holds complicated feelings for her as it was a place of great joy, but also great, disturbing pain. But something in the house will not leave Vera undisturbed - could it be the slightly creepy lodger living in the shed? A dark, unnatural evil under her bed? Or all the bodies buried in the basement?

Love the cover! Love the premise! Love the writing! Not happy with the end reveal. Would love to know your thoughts on it.

Looking for a book that will make your skin feel as though it's crawling with spiders? One that will make you want to check under your bed before you lay your head down to sleep? One that will keep you guessing, page after page? That's how Just Like Home was, for me!

3.5/5 stars (rounded up to 4)

Sarah Gailey's writing is descriptive and the vividness of this book was the biggest thing that kept me hooked. It's icky, and I mean that in a good way. Each scene is dark and expressive, told for a reason. I enjoyed the unraveling of Vera's past and her fears as she goes through her childhood home. The overall themes of growing up, death, family relationships and dysfunction, murder, and serial killers... They're woven together to form an interesting, unique story of a woman, her parents, their home, and the dark secrets kept by all. Including the house itself.

I did have a little trouble keeping up at times, specifically during scenes where I couldn't decipher if something was actually, physically happening, or if it was going on inside of someone's head. I also wanted a bit more about James' character, his art, and his own darkness, as well.

Overall, I think Just Like Home is an enjoyable thriller/horror that will leave you a little *uncomfy*.

Read if you like: The Haunting of Hill House, small towns, Bates Motel, secrets, and sleeping with your feet safely tucked under the covers.

Thank you NetGalley, Tor, and Sarah Gailey for an ARC of Just Like Home in exchange for my honest review!

The concept of this book was promising, and the initial intrigue worked well, but as the book continued it fell apart for me.

I found the characters to be lacking. The mysterious air around Vera's past was underwhelming, and the ending felt rushed and vastly unnecessary. Vera as a character had a complete 180 moment in the last few chapters, which came out of nowhere and wasn't very fitting with the character we'd grown to know throughout the book.

Overall I was very disappointed and I would not highly recommend this book.

Gailey’s latest novel goes into the horror genre. Vera has been called back home by her dying mother, but her home is a fraught place, full of dark memories. This novel didn’t quite work for me—the characters seemed underdeveloped and the horror parts of the novel weren’t scary. The parts that were supposed to be realistic didn’t ring true, and the whole thing felt rather drawn out.

The author knows how to draw a reader in and each emotion is so well and in detailed defined that not everyone can do that. But unfortunately I am more into reality rather than science fiction and I wish more development and understanding of the father, the mother and the heroine. You would think that the mother also ended up in jail as she knew about the crimes. You would think that more explanation was given about the heroine. Were they all psychopaths?

The ending was not satisfying to me as it hasn’t explained the heroine at all and the aim of the ending remained unclear, but it still remains an interesting read if one wants a change. Only no expectations should be about the book based on reality.

“It’s a well-built house they live in. It absorbs noise, hides light, keeps secrets. It wouldn’t betray her. Not ever.”

What if the monsters under your bed that you worried about as a child turned out to be real? JUST LIKE HOME is an intensely creepy horror novel that brings that question to life in all its fleshy, terrifying glory. After over a decade away, Vera is called home by her dying mother to help her prepare their family house for sale after her death. As she sorts through old belongings, she’s visited by memories of her father, a serial killer who died in prison, and haunted by the nightmares that plagued her childhood. The people of the small town she was raised in continue to abhor her and an artist with something foul lurking beneath his charismatic surface now occupies the shed out back. But soon her mother will be dead, and she can finally escape the bloody legacy that has chased her for years - or can she?

I’m a huge Sarah Gailey fan, and I love how each book of theirs does something different but in an equally masterful way. This book is utterly chilling from page one, the kind of story that you absolutely do not want to read in bed with the lights out. The writing is terrifyingly evocative, revolting and engrossing all at once. I was gripped by the plot throughout, unable to turn away as the mysteries unraveled and the horror escalated. I also found it to be a deeply insightful book. It’s about the inherent vulnerability and isolation of childhood, how that can be twisted into something terrible; it’s about the early messages we receive about sexuality and gender, how those continue to shape us as adults; it’s about parents, how they inevitably fail us intentionally or by accident; and it’s about our childhood homes, how their shelter and safety become something more. There’s so many blurred lines in this story, between love and hate, safety and danger, fear and hunger. A dark, claustrophobic, and completely riveting book. Thanks to Tor Books and Macmillan Audio for the review copies! Highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by Xe Sands. This novel is out 7/19.

Content warnings: kidnapping, torture, murder, illness, child abuse (physical and emotional), gore/body horror

Do you like creepy stories? You'll enjoy Just Like Home, the new book from Sarah Gailey.

"Vera gets a call to come home. Her mother is dying and wants Vera to take care of the house. The house that was built by her father - who happened to be a serial killer. Vera doesn't want to go back but can't say no. Vera still has things unresolved with her mother. And Vera has secrets ... and so does the house..."

Lots of things happen to Vera that make you question what's really happening - doors are left open, covers pulled off and noises under the bed. Gailey uses a dual timeline to let the reader know what happened in the house. And just how jacked-up all of the family is. You'll figure out what's going on pretty quickly but then there's a hard turn into Freakytown and the book goes from Suspense to Horror.

If you liked messed-up characters and light horror, you should enjoy this one.

Vera Crowder’s dying estranged mother asks her to come home, and Vera complies – even though every inch of the house she grew up in reminds her of her serial killer father, Francis. Her mother rents out the guest house, and the people who take up residence always know exactly who used to live in the Crowder house – to them, that’s the appeal. The current renter, an artist named James Duvall, is especially unsettling to Vera, in part because his father literally wrote the book on Francis Crowder, but also because he is convinced that the Crowder house is haunted.

This book is dark, twisted, and disturbing, but really beautifully written and compelling. Vera has a complicated relationship with her memories of her childhood. She remembers her father as a loving parent – far more loving than her emotionally abusive mother ever was – but the rest of the world knows him as a monster. The dark secrets of Vera’s childhood are slowly revealed to the audience as memories of the past are interspersed with the actions of the present. And in the present, we slowly begin to realize that something paranormal may indeed be going on at the Crowder house. (For some reason I wasn’t expecting the supernatural stuff, but it’s Sarah Gailey so I really should have known there would be some kind of SF/F element involved.)

CW: disturbing imagery, child abuse, murder, gore, torture

Vera has been called home to attend to affairs while her mother is dying. She returns to a the Crowder House and her bedroom under the stairs to find very little has changed, preserved under plexiglass. Her father, Francis, was a serial killer obsessed with draining the evil out of men, and after years of running from it, Vera now has to confront what he was and who she is.

This book. THIS. BOOK. This book is exactly what I want in a thriller/horror from Sarah Gailey. It’s creepy and scary and gory and I loved it. Vera is flawed, but with how her mother treats her, you can’t blame her and you root for her. I’m also just a sucker for houses that seem to have a life of their own. This is a definite must read if you love gothic horror/thriller books like I do.

This book literally chilled me to my core. I may or may not have had to sleep with a light on after reading this one. It definitely makes you fear every single bump that you hear in the night. The darkness always seems to have something looming and just waiting and watching you. If you need a thrill that will literally bring goosebumps to your skin while you're reading it, this is the book for you! The horror was so magnificently done that I will be raving about this book and this author for a long time!

Vera hasn't been to her family home in years. Now with her mother dying, Vera must return home to pack up her childhood memories and her family's murderous legacy.

This is the third book I have read by Sarah Gailey. Gailey is a great writer. Their novels are always imaginative, descriptive, engaging and thought provoking. "Just Like Home" was no exception. The plot of having a daughter return to the house where her father committed heinous crimes and to a mother who never truly loved her was very unique and powerful. Our main character Vera was very well written. She was complex, flawed and her arc was fully realized within the confines of this story. "Just Like Home" is a quick read that kept me turning the pages to figure out what happened next.

With that said, I do think "Just Like Home" just wasn't for me. Like Gailey's other books, I feel like the book jacket promises a plot that the book just doesn't deliver on. Not in a bad way, but in a way that I feel like the more central theme to this book is bigger than a woman returning home to where her childhood was ruined. There is always some hidden subplot in Gailey's books that makes itself known within the last fifty or so pages that has me scratching my head trying to figure out what this book is really about. Again, "Just Like Home" was no exception. Gailey is a wonderful writer, but at times their books can feel extremely dense because of the overly descriptive exposition and repetition. If I had to read the sentence "in the house my father built" one more time, I truly was about to lose it. I also am not a fan of constantly alluding to events that happened in the past without explaining them. Like how Vera doesn't trust the Duvalls, yet it wasn't exactly clear what the Duvall patriarch did to Vera until about 2/3s into the book but her distrust of them is mentioned several times before that. Or constantly bringing up that her father did something terrible, but not really getting into what that was until about half way into the book. Just feels hard to connect when you don't have all the information.

Overall, I feel like even with it's strengths, I had to give this book a three star rating just because again it promises to be one thing and ended up being something entirely different. It won't deter me from reading Gailey's books in the future, as I said I think they are a great writer. But this one just wasn't for me. I want to thank Macmillan-Tor/Forge and Net Galley for giving me an advanced copy.

I sort of felt cat-fished by this book. Which of course I loved! It totally surprised me and went in a direction I didn’t see coming. It was creepy, chilling, and super layered. I absolutely loved the ending!! Definitely would recommend for horror, mystery, and thriller fans.

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for this eARC in exchange of my honest review!

JUST LIKE HOME by @gaileyfrey exceeded all expectations. It was weird. It was creepy. It pushed boundaries. It made me feel emotions that I didn’t want to feel. Gailey has such a knack for writing weird stories and I’m here for it.

Vera Crowder hasn’t been home in over a decade. She steps through the threshold of her childhood home only to care for her dying mother whom she has no relationship with. But she’s not dying like a normal person. It’s… odd. Off even. Things are going missing. Things are being moved around. Oh, and there’s a man renting out the shed as a home to do research on the house because Vera’s dad was a serial killer.

So. Freaking. Good.

This story was also important for those who had strenuous relationships with their parents. The conversations surrounding this were deep and highlight worthy.

Just Like Home
By Sarah Gailey
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me, as it had things I really appreciated and liked, and things that didn't work as well for me. In terms of the positives, I really liked how Gailey delves into Vera's background and emotional history when it comes to her parents, and how her deeper connection to her Dad has made her more emotionally fraught. I think that when we hear about someone who does horrific acts, sometimes we have a hard time wrapping our heads around why their loved ones may be reluctant to turn on them, and I thought that Gailey really captured that with Vera. I also thought that there were some genuinely creepy elements to it, both in terms of supernatural scares as well as unsettling real life aspects (in a lot of ways it reminded me of the deeply disturbing movie FRAILTY). But I think that there was a bit about it that was almost TOO weird for me, as the big reveal near the end felt like an overextension of a metaphor Gailey was trying to convey. This is probably going to be a situation where different readers will have different reactions, but for me it fell kind of flat and offset a lot of what came before.

I'm absolutely going to look into more books by Gailey, as I like her style and the dark areas she explores. This one just didn't click as well.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: July 19, 2022
When Vera Crowder’s mother, Daphne, beckons Vera home to be by Daphne’s side as she dies, Vera doesn’t think twice. Even though she has been estranged from her mother for years, and hasn’t returned to Crowder House since being evicted by her mother as a teenager. Now, by her mother’s side, Vera realizes that nothing much has changed, except Daphne now has an artist-in-residence, who is helping Daphne with the house in exchange for “using the Crowder House as inspiration”. But Vera soon starts receiving disturbing messages, in her dead father’s handwriting, and is hearing far too many things go “bump” in the night. The guest insists he is not responsible, but who else could it be?
Sarah Gailey’s newest gothic horror novel, “Just Like Home” is tense, creepy and terrifying, in every way. Not only does “Home” have a haunted house at its centre, but Gailey adds Vera’s serial killer deceased father to the plot and it sends this novel to a whole new level of horror.
Gailey has a way of writing which is beautiful and poetic, even for a horror novel. In fact, the writing was so profuse that it was difficult for me to get into this novel right at the beginning. It wasn’t until about halfway through, or even two-thirds, when the novel became a complete page-turner, and I was utterly immersed in the Crowder House and its terrifying history.
The story is told from the perspective of Vera, but it is told in two time periods; when Vera was a child living with her parents in the newly built Crowder House, and as an adult when Vera is called back to her mother’s bedside. The chapters that focus on Vera as a young girl begin with Vera stating her age, so the reader can easily fall right into the plot. I loved that the story was told this way, as I was able to grow up alongside Vera, and suffer all her dysfunctional, angst-ridden prepubescent struggles right along with her.
As mentioned, once this story gets going I was fully in its grips (kind of like Crowder House). Each plot line received a complete ending, and the final few pages left me with chills. I am a new reader of Gailey, but if “Just Like Home” is any indication of her writing prowess, then I will definitely be exploring her new (and old) works as soon as possible.