I have to begin this review by saying that I'm a fan of the two books I've read so far from Grady Hendrix. This book is my third one from him and I was not disappointed.

I went into this book as blind as possible and I feel like that made this book so much more of a surprise. I took my time with the book. It took me longer than normal to read because I was engrossed in the story and I didn't want it to end. Once I got to the biggest surprise in the story, I was shocked.

I won't spoil anything but I really loved this book. At times it was creepy as hell but it also kept me intrigued. Grady Hendrix brought me another hell of a ride. Can't wait to see what the next book shall be.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Grady Hendrix, and Berkeley Publishing Group for providing me with a free electronic ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

I get the Grady Hendrix hype now because WOW!! I have so many friends who are obsessed with his work, but as a casual horror fan, I had never read any of his books before this one. You better believe that I will be going to check them out now because this is SCARY AF!! I started this book off a little confused and frustrated by the characters, but by the end, my jaw was on the floor. As someone who is a big scaredy-cat and can read horror but not watch it, I couldn't read this at night time, and there were even parts of it that were hard to read period because it was THAT scary/vivid to me. Without any spoilers, this is everything that childhood nightmares of scary puppets/clowns/dolls/imaginary friends are made of, and this would make an absolutely wild and disturbing film. I also enjoyed the themes of difficult family relationships and how generational trauma can affect us all. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight now after finishing this, but I have found a new favorite author of a genre I haven't read much of, so it's worth it!

Grady Hendrix does it again with this wildly bizarre horror novel. Louise must return to her childhood home after her parents die in an accident to sell the house. What follows is horrific , terrifying and believe it or not heartwarming. Don't miss this fabulous page turner of a book

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙔𝙤𝙧𝙠 𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙧 𝙂𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙮 𝙃𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙭 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙮 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙥𝙖𝙨𝙩—𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙛𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙮—𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙝𝙖𝙪𝙣𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙚𝙡𝙨𝙚.

📍 Read if you like:
• Haunted Houses
• Sibling Dynamics
• Creepy Dolls/Puppets
• Humorous Horror

I can’t express how excited I was when I got the chance to read this book early. I’ve had mixed feelings towards Hendrix’s previous books - my favorite was My Best Friend’s Exorcism - but I think this one may just be my new favorite from him!

Let me start by saying this book won’t be for everyone, but it really worked for me. I highly recommend going into it not knowing much!

While the book does focus on a haunted house and is technically horror, some humorous parts made the book less scary. However, I'm still creeped out by those puppets. Also, a big factor in the book is the character development and sibling dynamics between Louis and Mark.

This book is over 400 pages, but I feel like I was so engaged in the story that I flew through it. It is a bit slow-paced, but I didn’t have an issue - there was always something going on that had me intrigued.

Overall, this book won’t be for everyone - but I personally loved it so much. The humorous horror aspect really worked for me and I found the siblings to be so interesting. The haunted house and dolls/puppets added some scares, but it worked so well with the humorous side. Highly recommend this one!

The only word I can use to describe this one is “campy”. My only other Hendrix book was Horrorstor, quite a departure from my typical reading. I do love the redemption of the main characters. They were well written and I believed they genuinely misunderstood why they did not get along. The best reveal was when Louise returned to San Francisco believing the saga was over, but found a new version of the cursed puppet on Poppy’s arm. Chilling.

This got off to a slow start but once the supernatural shenanigans picked up it really took off. It’s just a given that clown puppets are evil.

*Thank you Grady Hendrix, NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.*

How to Sell a Haunted House shows us how difficult sibling relationships can be. The narrative is really about dealing with inherited familial pain and the repercussions of trying to hide that trauma, despite its demonic playthings and dark comedy. If you're anything like me, this book will affect you unexpectedly. There will be parts of the book where you laugh, parts where you despise the heroes, parts where you get the creeps, and still other parts where you might even cry. This book takes its time developing, so readers who prefer Hendrix's more frantic books should have some patience with the character development as they confront what has been left behind in their wake and come to terms with the death of loved ones. However, there is still plenty of suspense to keep you turning the pages, creeps that will make you shiver.

How To Sell A Haunted House was a decent horror read. However, I have mixed feelings about it. I did enjoy some of the underlining themes such as exploring family trauma, I just did not enjoy the horror elements Graham chose to get there. I am not even sure the method chosen counts as a haunted house. Not his best work in my opinion, but it was still moderately entertaining.

Louise and Mark Joyner are two siblings who have been on the outs for years. They are forced to come together when their parents die in a terrible car accident. When they get to the house they realize that something is not quite right. We are then taken down a path of reliving familial traumas and uncovering well kept secrets.

This book is more creepy then scary. It was also a bit confusing to follow. I am not sure if it is due to inconsistencies in the story or if the characters were all meant to be unreliable. This was a tad outside of my usual genre so maybe my disconnect was on a personal level.

This book was okay and I would still more than likely recommend it to readers of the horror genre.

Thank you Netgalley for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I shamefully don’t read a lot of horror, even though I usually enjoy what I read! I think I think that I’m a weenie from Weenie Hut Jr. when in reality the only things that turn me off in horror are demons and body horror (but, like, unnatural body horror. I was fine with the body horror in this book, but I had to watch people get Vecna’d through my fingers and had to dnf The Jumbies because her body was made out of bugs). So in short, I want to read more horror this year.
We follow Louise, who has to travel back to Charleston when her parents pass away in a car accident. She and her brother, Mark–who by the way are not on good terms–decide to sell the house, which will mean a whole different life for Louise’s daughter Poppy. But it quickly becomes clear to them that the house is haunted, and that the cause of the hauntings is her mom’s favorite puppet (of which she has many) Pupkin.
Y’all, this book is freaky. This book is brutal and graphic (seriously, if you don’t like gore or body horror, maybe skip this one).
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
But it’s also sad, which is the greenest of flags for me. I looooove when horror ends up being sad. It’s why Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House is in my top three favorite shows of all time (actually, there are many reasons I rank that show so high, and “horror-turned-sad” is just one reason). Every detail in this book pays off, and yes, I did cry. The character development between Louise and Mark was so satisfying to watch, and the ending had me in tears again and again and again.

I was waiting eagerly for this book, and it was worth it - and I’m sad it’s over 😞

This book delivered in every way I had hoped - this was thrill ride from the start and had all the horror and scary vibes I was hoping for! I genuinely love the way Hendrix writes and how he keeps you interested the entire time. There is also some humor that keeps you grounded during the craziness.

P.S. I’m so glad I didn’t do puppet ministry at church when I was younger 😅

I absolutely loved this book, if you’ve considered getting this book idk why you’re still reading this and not purchasing it. 👻

Even when I don't love a Grady Hendrix book, I'm still surprised by the new inventive ways he finds to creep me out. How to Sell a Haunted House follows Louise Joyner back to her hometown to deal with the aftermath of her parents' deaths. The first issue to tackle is her mom's massive collection of puppets, some of which seem to be up to no good. Murderous toys that move around are tricky to make menacing, and Pupkin is closer to Chucky than Annabelle. The story also gets bogged down by Louise's incessant arguments with her brother. I don't know if this was Hendrix's intent, but it was impossible for me to believe anything other than these two people are completely out of their minds. Criticisms aside, I will 100% be reading whatever Hendrix comes out with next.

Horror master Grandy Hendrix has returned with a nail-biting yet humous new story that is best served on a stormy late evening with a glass of wine, lots of candles… and maybe all of the lights on. When siblings Louise and Mark are given ownership of their parents’ home in Charleston after their untimely death, the pair are forced to reckon with not only creepy puppets and dolls and scary visions, but family secrets, lingering trauma, and the slowly unfurling grief of losing loved ones. Hendrix balances out the frightful with heart and laughs for an unforgettable, modern take on a haunted house tale.

There’s always something odd about the lifeless stares of dolls collecting dust in an empty, seemingly average American home. Soulless monsters, very typically, come to mind. For the horror storyteller of southern vamps and haunted IKEA furniture, dolls are the weird, perfectly intentional, subject to scare all readers. In the tradition of horror movies, How to Sell a Haunted House starts with a phone call and a death. A single mother, anxious about leaving her only child, mourns her parents after a very long, tense coronavirus pandemic, and returns to the home she wants to forget.

With all her relatives, whom all agree her family is the weirdest of the group, Louise begrudgingly celebrates the Jim Henson-styled funeral with middle-aged women dressed in fairy wings and ushers in pineapple-print dresses. In the childhood home of Mark and Louise are all their family memories and a fluffy promise of inheritance, along with an extremely grim sibling rivalry. Now, empty silence fills the dusty house post the suspicious car accident. All the “junk” of memories, as Louise says, is populated with the eerie silence of dolls, giving the whole house a haunted feeling.

Emotionally and very physically, the house is haunted by their childhood dolls and puppets. One, in particular, is named Pupkin, a puppet with a taste for blood and revenge. Louise’s anger towards her mother becomes the source Pupkin used to manipulate her when she was a child. He was the voice in her head, putting the darkest rage within a frustrated child. Now, an adult, Louise convinces herself and others that those horrible memories are just that. Imagined, inaccurate memories that hold no truth to reality. It’s this which causes the rift between her and Mark, whom Louise perceives as the overly dramatic, lazy grown child their mother always preferred. That’s the thing, though. Memories can be funny, especially when manipulated by traumatic puppets.

Noises actually start going bump in the night, a feral taxidermied squirrel among them. Facing the haunted house, the only conclusion these siblings come to is that in order to sell it, they need to stop covering things up and face their past. Sounds fun. But, as with most families with oodles of bad history, the monstrous puppets get creepier with every uncovered memory.

I loved how intense the feeling of eerie silence is, which amped up with one of the most horrifying puppets I’ve read. It’s amazingly disturbing to watch very real, normal people and their complicated feelings get attacked by an object from their childhood. It’s exactly the type of thing a horror author inspired by the 80s would do. I appreciate the levels Hendrix went to give me those ‘the puppets are alive’ feelings.

Those Freudian memories that Mark and Louise inherited from their mother become a theme of depression, mental health, and family history. The real horror in How to Sell a Haunted House. Childhood memories are often put into childhood toys, which so commonly become an escape from reality into something more comfortable. Hendrix, very clearly, wrote these siblings as intentionally unlikeable people. The most interesting part of this book, for me, was Mark and Louise’s past. The characters that are most interesting are real people with very honest family problems. Louise’s emotional complexity is pulled by losing her mother and father, which Hendrix centers around being targeted by “the forces of darkness,” as her Aunt Gail says. That “How did you get like this” aspect of the story interested me over everything else, including the murderous puppet.

While it’s not necessary to like the characters for me to like a book, there are some other issues that prevented How to Sell a Haunted House from becoming a more enjoyable read. Readers should know that even though what Mark and Louise go through are achingly relatable, they are not set up to be moral standards of humanity. And that’s what makes it such a deep book. They often do and say awful things, which many readers will not like depending on their reading preferences. I tend to prefer morally grey, complicated characters. They are endlessly fascinating to me. Over the course of How to Sell a Haunted House, Hendrix maintains these intense emotional moments, where characters genuinely struggle with their traumatic memories. The tone sets the novel into a very serious horror novel, dealing with very complex issues of memory and family conflict. So it makes it very difficult to take these real issues seriously when a little haunted puppet singsongs things like “…playPLAYplayPLAYplay…” It completely shatters the mood, detaching me from a closer emotional understanding of the characters. In particular, it’s hard to laugh at people terrorized by demonic puppets when you’re focusing on such important mental health issues. Some authors are able to successfully meet that balance, but the tone is really important here. I liked reading this book, but even with what I did like this book is noticeably off-tone and the main plot meanders a bit.

With that criticism in mind, Grimdark fans may enjoy this weird dark tale. Discover bliss in strange horror, hellish family secrets, morally grey siblings, and characters who eat curses for breakfast. How to Sell a Haunted House is gleefully coated in chaos, terror, and screaming puppets.

Thank you to @berkleypub and @letstalkbookspromo for the #gifted copy.

"Real isn't how you're made," Louise said. "When a child loves you for a long, long time, then you become real."

What the Heck did I just read?! Let's just say I will never look at puppets the same way again.

Louise and Mark's parents die in a car accident and Louise is summoned home to Mt Pleasant, SC for the funerals and for the reading of the will. Louise and her daughter, Poppy, have been living in California. Mark and Louise are estranged after a tumultuous childhood so going back to her childhood home is not easy for her. Louise and Mark are forced to face their past and the puppet who ruled their childhood named Pupkin. They want to sell the house, but it will not be an easy feat. Pupkin doesn't want to let go.

This book was so good. It had me reading up past my bedtime and even gave me the heebie jeebies.

I would LOVE to see a movie made of this one.

#howtosellahauntedhouse #gradyhendrix #promotehorror #horror #horrorbooks #berkleybuddyread #buddyread #kmoreadsnc #hauntedhouse #books #newbook #bookreview #bookrec #bookstagram

Oooh!! Haunted house, evil dolls. what fun of a book.

This was a great book, really. It focused a lot on family, family secrets, but mainly grief and how that sad energy can manifest into something different, something evil. I loved the concept, and I loved the execution. Though the parts of the book (which was very big part of the first half of the book) that focused on loss and grief was dragging. The only reason this was not a 5 star book for me.

Now the scary parts, made me cringe. Some were a bit out there (a puppet golem!!) but the parts with the evil puppet were perfect. The twists kept coming, and coming, and sometimes I wanted to close my eyes and not read, but I just couldn't stop.

Total fan of this.

Hendrix blends family drama and 80s pulp horror once again in his latest offering. Partly a treatise on grief and partly a look at an actual haunted house (haunted by a puppet), this memorable and scary novel blends humor, horror, and complicated sibling dynamics for a wild tale that readers won't soon forget. While a haunted puppet is as age-old as any haunted object or Golem, Hendrix has done something completely original with the creation of Pupkin, the handheld puppet at the center of this story. The emotional complexity between the two adult siblings in this, as well as the very real love that protagonist Louise feels for her daughter Poppy help add a grounded aspect to this often unhinged tale. The horror and violence are offset by very real familial relationships, and the result is a story that will keep readers turning pages well into the night.

This book was balls to the wall BONKERS. Hendrix doesn’t shy away from being a little weird and satirical in his horror novels and this book definitely delivered on both fronts. Highly recommend!

Do you find puppets and dolls creepy yet? If not, you may after this...

I love a good gothic novel and I was excited for this one. Some of Hendrix's thrillers haven't been my absolute favorites, but I really enjoyed this novel. It took awhile to get to the gothic elements - and they were a bit more predictable due to the gothic title - but I read this in one day because I absolutely had to know what would happen next. The family dynamics added a lot of character to this book and I hope we get to see some of them again.

I hope Hendrix writes some more gothic novels soon!

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for the opportunity to review this book ahead of publication. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

This is my first Grady Hendrix novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style. I will definitely be picking up more of his books in the future. I'm a big fan of character based narratives, so that was one of the things I liked the best about this book. The ways in which we got to know the characters a bit before we jumped into the full force of the plot, and how they developed throughout the novel to the end were aspects excellently executed. As far as subgenres of horror go, the doll/puppet variety of horror isn't really my cup of tea, which is mostly what hindered me from enjoying this as much as I could have. However, I don't regret this read at all and would definitely recommend it to new and old fans of horror, and I'm very excited to work my way through more of Grady Hendrix's novels.