Reviews tagging 'Child death'

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

269 reviews

caity_h's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror

Moderate: Child death and Self harm

gopackandstats's review against another edition

dark funny sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Medical trauma, Body horror, Gore, Car accident, Death, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Toxic relationship, and Animal death

Moderate: Murder, Gaslighting, Child death, Vomit, and Death of parent

Minor: Alcohol, Drug use, and Animal death

waltersb's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cursing, Child death, Death of parent, Death, and Emotional abuse

timelord10's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is my first Grady Hendrix book, and I loved the writing style. I'm not a big horror fan in general, but I'll definitely be checking out all of his other books. The only reason I'm rating it 3.5 stars is because there was a big part in the middle where I got bored, and I put the book down for a while. It just wasn't doing it for me for part of the book. However, I feel like I can't fully judge how good of a horror book this is because I don't have much to compare it to, but it definitely creeped me out at times. I think my favorite aspect of the book was the relationship between Louise and Mark. I loved how their bond grew over the course of the book.

It was also amazing how Grady Hendrix made you hate Pupkin the entire book, but at the end when you found out he was the ghost of Freddie, you still felt bad for him despite how terrible he had been. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Car accident, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Gore, Child death, Death, Violence, Cursing, Grief, Vomit, and Body horror

Moderate: Mental illness and Self harm

Minor: Medical content

mikaylawood's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Violence, Gun violence, and Gore

Moderate: Child death and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

demara_crim's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Confinement

Minor: Death of parent

omair's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

Coming in at over 400 pages, you would think the the tension from the haunt(s) would be tense and prolonged. But you would be wrong. It left me with a feeling of having read a Goosebumps book, just without the camp and instead a lot of arrogance.

Which is my main contention with the book. The characters spend so much of it in a stubborn, hubris driven interpersonal conflict that it is hard to like any of them for me. To go so many years without seeing your family and to continuously only treat them as if they are the same people they were all those years ago with zero possibility of growing is not a problem with them, it is a problem with you.

I was interested early on, but

after the excruciating detail in which the home and the puppets were described, I was severely disappointed at how blurry the details of the first attack were. No matter, I thought, we're finally to the good part! Nope. Back to the interpersonal relationship drama for pages on end.

Maybe if you like either or both of the main characters, the book would become much more interesting. I did not, so instead,

the repeated arguing was just mud to trudge through. The abrupt shift to the brother's story with a whole chapter of backstory just to get to the reveal that's supposed to be the driver in repairing the sibling relationship was awful. Nearly had to DNF just reading through so much inconsequential mess.

For a title about a haunted house,

there is surprisingly little haunted about the house itself. Or at least that's what you'll believe for 85%. It gets there in the end by pulling some huge shift with zero build up, but regardless this is way more just a haunted puppet story.

Which I can get over... if the puppet was actually memorable, or frightening, or in any way a strong villain in itself. It is not.

Maybe if you find someone yelling peepee poopoo funny, then you might find this book worth it. Otherwise probably not.

Honestly, I should've gone with the DNF about 2/3 of the way through when the first "ending" was reached. I would've missed

some of the important details, the actual emotional resolution, and the only redeeming parts of the story

, but I'd make that trade. The "twist" felt so forced, like it was written with a future movie franchise in mind, but even straight-to-DVD would be too good for this. Instead, the "twist" just opened up significant questions (to put it kindly, otherwise

just call them plot holes)

.

Like Mark's driving, I really feel Grady should just slow down and pick the right lane.

If it's a story about a haunted house, then give us the fear of time in the house experiencing the unnerving. If the story is about an evil puppet, then give us a layered evil that builds to the final standoff. If it's about an otherwise innocent ghost, then give it a more human, nuanced, arc or, at least, give us a reason to believe it would just resort to killing at every opportunity. But in every case, leave out Spider (an imaginary-but-also-real fantasy dog). And leave out the puppet golem.

Those are huge departures from everything else in the story and make a complete mess of the rules of your world. To me, that's where most horror dies its fastest death. Ghosts, zombies, evil puppets, magic, whatever fantastical elements are part of your world - and they are totally valid to have - have to have developed and consistent co-existence with our real world. There has to be some guiding principles, laws, to abide by. Without that, your world will fall flat and lose me from the audience. For anyone else like me, walk away from this book and fast.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death

Moderate: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Car accident, and Death of parent

Minor: Animal death and Child abuse

thetinyhealer's review against another edition

mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book was pretty interesting and strange. I never thought I'd listen to an audiobook about haunted puppets, but here we are. 

This was a story about loss and generational trauma told as two dysfunctional siblings try to uncover the mysteries surrounding their familial past and strange happenings in their deceased parent's house.

There are some things about this story that just don't make sense, and there are some pretty unforgivable things the characters do that seem to just get glossed over and are never mentioned again. I also don't believe the redemption arc in certain characters that I think we're supposed to feel. The story kept my attention but it also had me frequently thinking, really? I'm supposed to be scared of puppets? It could make a good PG-13 movie for spooky season, but I wouldn't go super out of my way to recommend this book to a friend.

On the positive side? I think this author did a great job of writing a strong, sensible and independent FMC. And I appreciated that she was a meaningful character on her own, without needing any kind of romantic relationship in her story. This book also kept me interested pretty consistently. It normally takes me a while to get through audoobooks but I ripped through this one within a couple of days. A very strange concept, but a ride of a book for sure. 



Trigger warning! There are a few gory scenes. May include: eyes, limbs, blood. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, and Violence

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Child death, Death of parent, Medical trauma, Murder, and Gaslighting

Minor: Vomit and Gun violence

more detail on trigger warnings: eye gets stabbed with a needle, dismembered limb, multiple hospital scenes, scenes where people are scratched or cut bloody by a knife or claws, building burned down with people inside, multiple attempted / successful murders of children by other children, generational trauma that relatives refuse to acknowledge, parental death, child death, and the brother constantly being a complete and utter jerk to his grieving sister.

andyandnormski's review against another edition

dark sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

As much as I wanted to like this book, it fell flat for me. The dust jacket more or less promised a haunted house story. What I got instead was a possessed puppet, and while the reveal of its origins at the end was well written, the puppet itself came out of left field a little too fast for me. It felt jarring when, up until that point, over half the story revolved around the siblings and a haunting sense of foreboding. Once the puppet arrived on the scene, it went from feeling somber to slapstick horror. I think my problem was there was no sense of build-up towards the puppet being alive and to the extreme levels that it was. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Toxic relationship, Death, Gore, Death of parent, Medical content, Grief, Car accident, Gaslighting, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Blood, and Child death

Minor: Violence

oktrouble1401213's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I really liked the idea of this book, it felt really fresh and unique. However, something about the execution of it made it difficult for me to get through. I felt the second half dragged on a lot. The first half was a great time and the ending was alright, but this is definitely my least favourite Hendrix book so far. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Death of parent, and Grief

Moderate: Car accident, Child death, and Body horror