Review: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Author: Grady Hendrix

Publisher: Berkeley

Publication Date: January 2023

Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.

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…

How to Sell a Haunted House involves Louise and her brother Mark. When their parents die suddenly, they must set aside their differences and figure out how to sell their childhood home. However, it seems that house doesn't want to be sold. 

I'll be honest, I didn't love this one.  It was a bit too campy and not creepy enough for me.  I also wanted a haunted house story, not a haunted/possessed doll story. But that is was I got.  The first half of the book was really boring.  I found myself not really caring about Louise or her brother. It wasn't until about halfway through that the story really took off. Even then, I was underwhelmed  Having said that, I felt like the author took storylines from other books and mashed them up into this story.  Putting aside the bloody, violent portions, this could have been a Goosebumps level movie.  The reveal was kind of underwhelming rolling into a just "meh" ending.  I loved this author's last two books.  Hopefully this one is just a dud and the next one will be back on par with the books I have loved. 

Review: The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Author: Grady Hendrix

Publisher: Berkley Books

Publication Date: July 2021

In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her?

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized--someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

I had a lot of fun reading The Final Girl Support Group.  It is told through the perspective of Lynnette Tarkington who is considered a final girl.  In this reality, the slasher movies that I grew up loving in the 80s are based on actual murders that left final girls.  These girls have been meeting in a support group for years.  Now someone is killing them one by one.

This book is definitely a love letter to slasher films.  I loved that aspect of it because I am a huge fan of slasher films. I was eating up the references to the movies I grew up loving.  Lynnette was an interesting character.  Her reaction to her trauma was to live in insolation with no friends.  Her only in person connection was her support group and the psychologist who ran it.  While she had spent all her time trying to be safe, she ended up making a lot of dumb and impulsive decisions throughout the book.
The other characters in the book were fun as well.  It was interesting to see how each final girl dealt with their trauma differently.   The book did keep me guessing.  As with most of this author's books, there is a lot of violence and gore.  It was fairly fast paced and kept me engaged.  I do recommend this one.

Review: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Author: Grady Hendrix
Publisher: Quirk Books
Publication Date: April 2020

Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the '90s about a women's book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia's life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they're more likely to discuss the FBI's recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club's meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he's a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she--and her book club--are the only people standing between the monster they've invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires is the third book that I have read by this author.  So far, it's the one I have liked the most.  The story takes place over about a 10 year period in the late 80s to 90s.  It's almost like a satire on suburban America in the 80s and 90s with housewives who are into true crime books and the husbands who take them for granted.  Throw in a vampire and you have one hell of a ride.

I'll start by saying this is very much and adult novel.  For anyone who liked My Best Friend's Exorcism, don't expect YA here.  There are very adult scenes in the book.  The beginning was a little slow, but necessary to build the relationship between the ladies of the book club.  The story follows Patricia and her discovery that a new neighbor isn't all he seems to be. I did like the characters and the overall story.  There were a few frustrating moments when Patricia's friends seem to turn their backs on her, despite all of her evidence.  And, I did spend a fair amount of the book wanting all of the women to just walk out on their husbands.  But the horror parts of the book more than made up for those aspects.

This is one of those books that is hard to talk about without giving anything away.  I will point out a couple of things to be aware of.  If you are in any way squeamish about bugs, there is a scene in here that will send you running for the hills.  I was SO itchy listening to it.  I should also give a couple of trigger warnings for rape and sexual assault of minors.  This IS a horror book and the author doesn't pull any punches.  I will recommend this one with the above warnings.

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Author: Grady Hendrix
Publisher: Quirk Books
Date of publication: September 2014

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.
This was a random download from my library.  Sometimes I have great luck and other times I don't.  In this case I didn't .  To be honest I'm not even sure why I finished listening to the book.  It wasn't a long book, so maybe I was hoping it would get better.  It never did.

The premise is a store much like  IKEA called ORSK where weird things begin to happen.  The executives decide to have 3 employees stay overnight to see if they can catch the culprit.  It quickly turns into a nightmare as they realize the store was built on top of a prison.  Sounds like it would make for a great ghost story, right?  Wrong.  It was really kind of boring.  It reminded me of a really bad indie movie with no name bad actors.  You know the type I mean. 

None of the characters were likable and I really wasn't rooting for any of them to survive. The other thing about the book that got old was the descriptions of furniture that began each chapter.  The names of the furniture were weird and very distracting.  There really isn't much I can say other then this book was so bad.  I can't recommend it.  It's 6 hours I won't get back!