How to Sell a Haunted House is a Hard Sell

If I'd known this book was about creepy dolls, I might not have read it.

OK, that's a lie, I totally would have. I enjoyed Grady Hendrix's Horrorstor and My Best Friend's Exorcism enough that I'm making a concerted effort to read his other books. He has an unmatched ability to mash the humdrum adult day-to-day experience with pure retro horror tropes. He's like R. L Stine for Millennials.

Once again, Hendrix has found the sweet spot between emotional strife and the supernatural terror that puts it all in perspective. Louise - a successful, STEM working, single mother in San Fran - is rocked by the sudden accidental death of her parents. 

Her return home is tense, with her wastrel brother Mark demanding control of the funeral arrangements and her determination to be the mature one collapsing with the news that she has been disinherited in favour of her brother. All too soon they are physically scrapping on the front lawn. 

When the larger family intervenes, the two come to a reluctant agreement to empty the house and split the sale proceeds. This is no joke, as their mother was a puppeteer and the house is filled with her creations. 

With Louise coldly detached and Mark refusing to throw anything away, their slow progress and constant sniping would be bad enough if it wasn't soon apparent that there are bigger problems in the house. Namely, their mother's favourite puppet - Pupkin - is alive, it controls the other puppets in the house, and it hates them.

I struggled with the first third of the book for multiple reasons. Louise is a hard character to like. Her story initially comes across as two separate AITA posts, in which she'd be deemed YTA (you're the asshole) or at least ESH (everyone sucks here) in both cases. This should be easy to forgive, considering she's just lost both parents, but her grief doesn't come across and instead she seems irritated and self-obsessed. 

She can't seem to understand that a five-year-old might need a more gentle introduction to the concept of death than 'hey your grandparents died'. She is furious that the girl's father even suggests child therapy, despite her kid's clear trauma, and acts like she's the only responsible parent. While she has legitimate reasons for disliking her brother's actions, her sneering at his white-trash tattoos comes across as elitist and when they recreate a family tradition of chinese and pizza, she can't even bring herself to eat such 'neon' and 'greasy' food.

But Mark is clearly worse. He waits forty-eight hours to tell his sister their parents are dead, tries to control the funeral against the whole family's wishes, delights at being able to cut his sister out of the inheritance, and generally works to make Louise as miserable as possible. When Louise ends up physically fighting him for the death certificates, you can understand why. I hate wastrel characters even more than dolls, but we at least had the comfort of knowing that we would eventually get to see his side of the story.

Frustratingly, neither brother nor sister really grow throughout the book. They bury the hatchet (amongst other things) and much of the things they hated each other for turned out to be Pupkin's work. But Mark is still a selfish wastrel who regresses to blaming Louise at a moment's notice, and apart from the fact she now acknowledges her brother's existence, there's no sense Louise has got much out of this beyond answers to a few family mysteries.

I love the book's overall message - that secrets and silence are damaging, that grief has to be faced and not ignored, and that people should unite in loss and not tear each other apart - but that would have worked much better with more of the family involved. Grady brings in a bunch of strong family elders and cousins at the start, and then keeps side-lining them whenever their sense might get in the way. Hilariously a lot of time is devoted to the family knowing exactly what to do about the dolls... only to have Mark and Louise abandon them for the entire rest of the book.  

There is some great horror here for sure. Being attacked by taxidermied squirrels is a strong opener, and some of Louise's recovered childhood memories of Pupkin are straight-up chilling. Some of the later scenes involving Louise's daughter are right out of The Exorcist and the inventiveness of having their old imaginary dog become an actual monster is pretty good. I would have liked the 'Mark' and 'Louise' dolls to play a bigger part in the scares, but they are so straightforwardly creepy that they keep you on edge anyway. 

I didn't hate this book at all, but I think it was mis-marketed (it's not a haunted house story at all), rushed, and padded out in the middle. All the elements of a great story are there, but it doesn't ever click.

But don't let this put you off Grady Hendrix. I'm reading The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires right now and I'm already eager to write about it...