Book Review: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

I didn’t love Grady Hendrix’s last book, The Final Girl Support Group, but I still have so much affection towards the author after reading the stellar The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, that I was more than willing to give his latest a try. I can happily report that How to Sell a Haunted House finds him back in top form, having written another immensely satisfying story that’s perfect for a chilly Fall night with the wind roaring outside.

Now living in California, Louise is called back to Charleston, South Carolina after receiving word that her parents have both died in a tragic car accident. She leaves her 5-year-old daughter Poppy with ex-boyfriend Ian and flies across the country, reeling from the news, but already beginning to make plans for how she will deal everything that needs attending to as efficiently and orderly as possible, as she’s always done. Upon arriving at her parents’ home however, she is quickly confronted by her estranged brother Mark. His reputation as a slacker had her believing he wouldn’t want anything to do with the work that goes along with settling someone’s life, but he instead has already got a clean-up crew pulling into the driveway, planned the funeral, and is asking about the will.

His seeming thoughtlessness about her feelings in any of this enrages Louise, who decamps to her aunt’s nearby home. Their relatives attempt to get the pair to reconcile, but things only seem to grow worse between the siblings, leading Louise to vow to do whatever she can to thwart Mark’s plans. But as they spend more and more time in their childhood home, strange things begin to occur, and their mother’s beloved collection of hand-made puppets and dolls begin to take on a sinister air. Soon, they both will be forced to deal with something dark from their family’s past, and they will need to excavate secrets of their own and learn to work together if they have any hope of survival.

Hendrix’s quirky sense of humor is less present here than in his previous work, but his excellent characterization remains. Louise and Mark are fully formed human beings, who have both been through some incredible trauma, and it’s easy to root for them as they finally learn to properly deal with it. The complicated sort of grief they feel about the deaths of their parents will resonate with many and can feel cathartic for anyone dealing with loss of their own. A palpable sense of sorrow lingers throughout the book, occasionally leavened by the engaging side characters in their family, but this isn’t just a novel about a family in pain. It’s also a relentlessly suspenseful chiller, featuring a villain for the ages. Hendrix leans heavily into the horror and violence of the story and serves up several imaginatively frightening sequences. How to Sell a Haunted House is one of the scariest books in years, and readers will be unlikely to forget the name Pupkin for a long time to come. ★★★★★