Books: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (2023)

“When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world. Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market. But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them.”

As someone put this, How to Sell a Haunted House is like Annabelle meets Child’s Play, mixed with a wonderfully Southern dysfunctional family drama. It’s also about dark secrets our family –both intimate and extended- keeps. Ones we sadly pass down from one generation to the next. Where Hendrix’s previous work was bit homage’s to growing up in the 80s and 90s, this is a bit more mature work, but still filled with his perfect dark sense of humor. I mean, I guess, less campy, even if he treads familiar ground with possessed dolls.

It’s not a perfect novel, as it takes forever to get going and it takes a lot to really like Louise and Mark –even when I see some my own sibling rivalry in their relationship. They’re both rather horrible people, but I can understand Louise’s choice to leave Charleston and move to San Francisco. She’s escaping her family’s problems with hopes of starting fresh. Still, at times Mark and her relationship is a bit soap opera-ish and some of the dialogue about modern parenting is reminder that while I may not have the most perfect mother, she never worried about explain to us concepts like death and being a consistent parent. And Aunt Honey easily gives up the dark tale of the family after keeping it buried for sixty-eight years.

I can’t hate it, as it was silly fun, and Hendrix appears to maturing as writer of Southern Gothic Horror, but like his previous tomes, it stumbles here and there and never becomes a home run you think it should