"Can I go inside your heart?" asks an evil entity known as "Other Mommy." 8-year-old Bela tells her story in her own voice, making this a riveting horror story, skillfully told from the pen of a very talented author. He writes in a unique style from Bela's perspective, making this story scary, creepy, fun, and terrific! Highly recommended! Thanks to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine, and Del Rey for providing an ARC.

Wow. That was unique, horrifying, and suspenseful. I haven’t read a book this fast in a long time. This book is perfect for horror fans!

At eight-years-old, Bela is a pretty typical kid. She loves to dress up and dance for Mommy and Daddo's guests. She enjoys the park. What she doesn't enjoy is the constant requests of Other Mommy to "go inside her heart."  While Bela manages to keep the mysterious Other Mommy at arm's length for some time, it becomes clear that the entity no longer wishes to wait for her attempts to take over the child and begins to unleash strange occurrences around the house. While Mommy, Daddo and Grandma Ruth think that Bela must be imagining things. After a guest to the house says she'll never come back about what she's seen, Bela's stories seem more plausible. Slowly but surely each family member sees the mysterious entity. The family goes on a mission to try and escape Other Mommy, exposing the major faults in Mommy and Daddo's marriage and a family secret that was never intended to be shared

Incidents Around the House is one of those books that causes the reader to leave all the lights on at night. I'm no stranger to a good horror novel, and even I felt the need to make sure the closet door was shut tight, and the lights were on when reading this one. Author Josh Malerman makes the reader really question what could be under the bed or in the closet.

Incidents Around the House is available July 25, 2024, from Random House.

A chilling account of a young girl named Bela who has an imaginary friend she calls "Other Mommy." Is Other Mommy an imaginary friend filling a void in Bela's life, or is it something more? The book is told from the perspective of 8 year old Bela who is constantly being asked by Other Mommy to be invited into Bela's heart. Strange things start happening around the house and there is the sense that wherever Bela goes, Other Mommy goes too.

for me, the chill factor was that the book is told from Bela's perspective. Beyond that, it wasn't particularly scary or horror-filled. Still, it was another enjoyable;e read from Josh Malerman.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review.

I had to dnf this one for now, I just found Bela’s pov to be very grating. I thought at one point it would be revealed she wasn’t a kid at all just because I couldn’t make sense of her age.

Thank you for the publisher for this arc! I really enjoyed this read! This was a quick, eerie read for me. I see why this one was picked up by BOTM. I love the horror genre less any gore, so I really appreciated this. In my opinion, this book has everything I look for in a horror/thriller read. I only struggled a bit with the dialogue/lack of quotation mark usage. 4 ⭐️!

This book was equal parts horrific at times and life lesson-y if that makes sense. It was creative and actually creeped me out to read at night (lol). It was written from a child’s POV but would skip around and formatted like a poem almost. It went on a hair too long because it seemed like regardless there would just never be a solution. I had a hunch about the “Other Mommy” name early on.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and Del Ray for my DRC in exchange for my honest review.

This is possibly the scariest book I've ever read. I don't normally pick up horror or anything close. Bela has an imaginary friend named "Other Mommy", except she might not be imaginary and she might not be a friend.

The audiobook is fantastically done. The book is entirely from Bela's point of view and @delanienicolegill does an amazing child's voice.

I'll be recommending this this fall to people who like:
- paranormal horror
- single pov
- scary audiobooks

Excited to read this thriller but then after, I must say it was quite quirky and bizarre. Told from the perspective of a young child, the prose is dialog and thoughts within her head. Bella sees someone else in the house where she lives with Mommy and Daddo. It's "Other Mommy" who lives in her closet. At first you think of stories of children who have nightmares of the boogieman or monster who live in their closet, but this becomes so much more. Other Mommy eventually sits on her bed, is in her bathroom, comes downstairs, and then is at the park where she plays. Other Mommy continues to talk to Bella about "carnation" (reincarnation) and asks Bella if she can come inside her heart. Bella tries to make sense, but wants to protect her parents. They don't understand and their marriage is fragile as well. Is Bella safe in her own bed? It's a very strange premise, especially after strange things begin to happen and other people catch glimpses of Other Mommy as she grows stronger. Truth be told, I'm not sure that I liked it. While the tension builds towards the end, the storyline din't keep my interest with the choppy dialog and the repetitious events. It was just okay. Many thanks to #netgalley #incidents aroundthehouse #joshmalerman #randomhouseballantine for the opportunity to read and review this book.

My experiences with Malerman's books vary so widely and unfortunately Incidents Around the House was a miss. To start with the positives: I thought the premise was unique. We follow eight-year-old Bela, whose parents have a slightly tumultuous marriage. Bela has been seeing an entity in her room, who she calls Other Mommy. The descriptions -- and lack thereof -- of Other Mommy make her truly creepy. There are some genuinely terrifying moments in this, and Malerman is great at keeping the tension up.

Unfortunately, I also felt like a lot of this dragged for me. Between the eerie moments, there were a lot of monologues. My issue was primarily that I didn't understand what he was trying to convey here. I also struggled a bit with the writing style and would often have to reread passages to fully understand what was going on and who was speaking. My caveat being that I'm not sure how much of this was due to the writing or due to it being an advanced copy. Either way, I do seem to be in the minority as this has a pretty high average rating. So if it seems up your alley, it's probably worth checking out.

OMG, WTF did I just read? I don’t think a book has ever made me scared to go to sleep, until now! Maybe it’s because my side of the bed is next to the closet door? Seriously, I don’t get scared by books or movies that often … this has me freaked out. Let me say, I didn’t realize this was a paranormal horror book when I started reading, I wasn’t prepared! Lu Lily the author was gracious enough to throw in some humor, I caught myself laughing out loud a few times (felt good to break the tension). A little hard to read at first, had to gain my footing because of the POV. It’s written from the POV of 8 year old Bela (although it reads a little younger, I could see maybe a 6 year old). She lives with mom and dad, who are having some marital issues (that they don’t think Bela picks up on, but she does). She has one close friend, and a nice babysitter, but that’s about it. Enter “Other Mommy”, the scariest thing to invade my brain in awhile. She hides in the closet, at first, then starts to creep out into Belas room … she wants to know if she a can “Enter her heart” and reincarnate. Bela says NO, but throughout the book you see Bela fight with whether she should say yes, just to make everything stop. The entity grows stronger, becomes more bold … things happen, I can’t say what, but let’s just say there seems like no escape. I couldn’t read fast enough, I couldn’t breathe, I don’t think I’ll forget this book for awhile.

I did not enjoy this book. The parents names: Daddo and Ursula were not appealing. I was expecting to be scared out of my mine based on ratings and comments BUT I found this book to be endless rambling and extremely anti-climatic. Very disappointed!

If I never have to read or hear the word “Daddo” for the rest of my life, I would be truly grateful! This is being sold as “horror,” but honestly there wasn’t anything remotely scary about this entire story. This is more about a story about an eight year old named Bela, and it’s written from her pov, about her and her parent’s lives with a “creepy monster” lurking in her closet…

The way this book was written took a bit to get used to because the dialogue isn’t written like regular dialogue. Also, the conversations with Bela from adults/her family were not what normal convos would be like with a child, let alone an eight year old. This story was wayyyyyyy too long and the story kept going around and around in circles for a ridiculous amount of time!

Don’t even get me started with the ending?! I wasted 300+ pages of this annoying story to find out literally nothing. What an awful ending and nothing felt resolved or buttoned up in any way.

I do not understand how this has such high ratings, are we all reading the exact same book?! There was nothing remotely scary about this book at all!

If you’re looking for a true horror book, you want something spooky, creepy and to be scared?! This IS NOT IT! I would not recommend this unless you want annoying dialogue, a creature of some sort, family drama and an awful ending.

This author is so hit or miss for me. I've loved some of his works. I found some OK. This one.....I get it. I get that this is told from the point of view of the young girl at the center of the "incidents." The story telling is so stilted and hard to read that the tension and terror are completely lost. This should have been truly creep and terrifying. But the style took me out of the narrative again and again. When I think of the story now I see how truly scary this could be. Instead I cringed at every "Daddo". I hated not knowing if the main characters was thinking or speaking until halfway through a sentence because the author refused to use quotation marks. I know what he was trying to do. It didn't work for me.

Rating: 5 million stars!

Wow. Easily the best horror book I have ever read.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a skin crawling angsty read. I navigated between my kindle and audio. Wow, both formats were 🤌🏽. I used both formats as this book was unputdownable.

This tells the story of 8-year old Bela and what she has been experiencing. It opens right into Bela and her interactions with her Daddy (Daddo), Mommy, and… Other Mommy. Other Mommy is an entity that is relentless in her pursuit of asking Bela the reoccurring question of, “Can I go inside your heart?” At first, only Bela had interactions with Other Mommy, but eventually Other Mommy makes herself known to others. Thinga progress quickly in this story and this nail-bitter will make you crazy in seeing what happens next.

🎧 Narrated by 17 year old Delanie Nicole Gill she captures the childlike essence of young Bela. I felt that much of the story truly felt as though it was coming from that of a little girl.

Thank you #NetGalley and #DelReyBooks for an arc of #IncidentsAroundtheHouse in exchange for an honest review.

Incidents Around the House is an eerie and atmospheric read. The viewpoint of the child made it extremely creepy. It manages to instill fear without oversharing, thereby making it more scary than any gore filled story. The ending was inevitable but still managed to leave me in a state of shock.

I have loved every book of Josh Malerman’s that I have read (including Pearl - you must look this one up immediately!) but I think Incidents Around The House may have nudged Bird Box from it’s top spot as my fave Josh Malerman book.

I have posted this review on Amazon, Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6604507540

And Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8u9U9PPYqG/?igsh=MWFhcDVubmw4OHh1Yg==

Here’s the thing. When I started this book I was so excited about it, and for the first half I was really loving it. It’s creepy, and the writing is different and interesting. But when I was about 50% through, real life hit me and my family very hard. I decided to continue on reading, but the second half was just not as good as the first for me, which was to be expected given my circumstances. I was just struggling to feel anything at all while reading it. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t excited, the ending didn’t land right, and I was only invested enough to keep reading. But I didn’t dislike it either.

This is 100% not the book’s fault. Even with my circumstances I still liked the book, and can tell that if things were normal I would have really enjoyed it. So even though my experience with it was maybe three stars, I’m going to rate it four stars, as I’m pretty sure that what I would have given it normally.

So I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for something creepy and unique. This is my second Malerman novel (and I’ve also read one of his novellas), and this one has convinced me to go back (at some point) and read his backlist books that I haven’t yet read.

Meh. I loved Bird Box and Malorie but this book wasn't for me. I kind of liked the perspective from a child, but it is felt slow and repetitive. And the ending completely ruined it for me.

(3.4)

This is a book I was really looking forward to reading. The premise sounded really interesting and I'd heard that some people actually got scared.

While this wasn't a complete let down, I was a bit disappointed. I read this by myself at night and didn't get scared. I really wanted this to get under my skin. That's not to say that there weren't some creepy parts in the book, though.

I found it was hard to get scared with the descriptions given by the main character, who is an 8 year old child. I was also taken out of the story a bit when the parents would go into long monologs.

That said, I couldn't put this book down. Something about it just makes you want to keep reading. I still had a good time.

I do wish the ending had been different, though.

I'd still recommend this to those who love stories about haunted houses, family dramas, or beginners when it comes to reading horror.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine, Del Rey, and the author for providing me with an ARC for review.