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.

I ran out of time to read this! BUT, there is no doubt that fans of Grady Hendrix's Campy Horror style will enjoy his newest title.

Let me start by saying I've been a Grady Henrix fan since Horrorstor first came out. But honestly, this wasn't my favorite. The main character was likable but her brother is incredibly annoying and I found myself tense and annoyed by their fighting and his immaturity. It got in the way of my enjoyment of this "old school" haunted house tale. The haunting story was interesting but I didn't find myself wanting to pick up this book very often. I look forward to reading Grady Henrix's next book, but this one just didn't do it for me.

**Thank you, NetGalley and publisher, for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.**

Kakawewe! It’s time to play!

When Louise’s parents die in a car accident, she plans a relatively quick trip to Charleston for their funeral and to handle their affairs. Perhaps the only thing worse than prematurely saying goodbye to her parents is dealing with her younger brother, Mark, whose chronic underemployment has kept him dependent on their dad, a retired economics professor, and mom, a puppeteer (yes, you read that correctly!).

Walking through the house for the first time after their death unsettles Louise: her mother’s purse was left on the counter and her father’s cane in the living room; the attic door nailed shut; and her mom’s puppets and dolls sitting on the living room furniture as though they were watching television. Louise admits it’s creepy but she’s nothing if not rational and she has bigger things to worry about, like Mark’s outrageous ideas for the funeral.

When their realtor tells them the house is haunted, Louise is ready to turn tail and head home to San Francisco in the face of such ridiculousness…even though she sees things she can’t explain, even though disquieting memories start to surface. She has to do the last thing she wants: join forces with Mark or allow the house to haunt her family forever.

HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE is campy horror. At times, I was scared, and I found a few scenes gruesome, but overall, it was a fun, fantastical book. The novel also had emotional depth and interesting characters dealing with family dysfunction and long-buried secrets, and I found myself tearing up a time or two.

It is probably obvious already but if you have pupaphobia or pediophobia, you’ll want to steer clear of this book. If you like “horror lite” such as Tucker & Dale vs. Evil or want to dip your toe in the genre, I recommend it!

I am not sure what possessed me to finish this book so late at night but let me advise you against reading this late at night, or if you enjoy the creep factor DO read it at night. Either way I loved it. Delightfully scary in a way that I haven’t read in SO LONG. This is like #Goosebumps for adults.
.
I do not want to say too much but creepy puppets and dolls will surely haunt your dreams after reading this. Also, when puppet Pupin cheerfully exclaims, “Pupkin here! Pupkin here! Everybody laugh! Everybody cheer!” It might be best to hide under the covers. This one is so wierd, so creepy and just straight up off the wall and I love it.
.
This book is out Tuesday!
.

Huge thank you to @berkleypub @berittalksbooks @thephdivabooks @dg_reads and @netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.