Reviews tagging 'Cursing'

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

24 reviews

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

honeybeewitched87's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror

Moderate: Vomit, Injury/Injury detail, Child death, Pregnancy, Grief, Medical content, Blood, Cursing, Death, Gaslighting, Gore, Alcohol, Death of parent, Violence, and Car accident

alexisgarcia's review against another edition

mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.5

this was pretty good but a little too silly to really scare me. i’ve never thought dolls were scary so this didn’t get to me that much, i also thought the ending was kind of out of nowhere?? idk. i do love Hendrix’s writing though. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Ableism, Addiction, Alcohol, Animal death, Murder, Grief, Panic attacks/disorders, Animal cruelty, Alcoholism, Cursing, Gore, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Body horror, Death, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Toxic friendship, and Violence

murmurations_x's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

“Strange noises, bad vibes, your mom and dad recently passed— Your house is haunted and I'm not selling it until you deal with that." 

Our biggest takeaway from reading this book is.... I'm a Grady Hendrix girly.

I really wasn't expecting to love this story

(especially when I realized that it was a haunted puppet not so much ghosts in a house)

as much as I did. I absolutely devoured this book it was such a wild ride and I was living for every twist and turn it took. Please somebody adapt this book now to a series or film its perfect for it!

Hendrix is one of the few horror authors that I actually enjoy how they write women. Louise was likeable, unlikable and very real and Mark was definitely my favourite character of the book and I loved how his backstory is given to us from his own POV. I really enjoyed reading about them both coming back together as siblings to face their family trauma and defeat the entity of the story. Also worth a mention is I loved how the move was broken up by the stages of grief, super clever!

Hendrix does what Hendrix does best in this book which is write a funny, campy, tropey horror story that has elements of some pretty intense body horror. A perfect read for October, definitely recommend. 

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Murder, Cursing, Self harm, Gaslighting, Medical content, and Stalking

Minor: Pregnancy and Alcohol

korikam's review against another edition

dark emotional tense fast-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Death, Medical content, Blood, Child death, Death of parent, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Torture, Cursing, Gore, and Violence

Minor: Alcohol

rachelunabridged's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Blood, Death of parent, Grief, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Child death, Cursing, and Self harm

Minor: Car accident

charlieweasley's review against another edition

dark emotional funny 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Death of parent, Vomit, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Cursing, and Death

Moderate: Car accident

Minor: Child death

rowancdewit's review against another edition

challenging dark funny sad tense fast-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

4.0

I’ll be real! I’m not a big horror novel girl, I haven’t read many other horror books, so I don’t really know what to judge it off of… but I read this in a DAY. I couldn’t put it down. I kept saying “okay, after this chapter, I’ll be done for the day.” And that didn’t happen until the end of the book.

Warning, there are a few bits of the book that were a liiittle too much for me. (Violence, weird descriptive spooky things) But everytime those scenes happened, I’d get a tight “oof” in my gut, thinking to myself “Okay, I gotta skim this.” And then the next scene would be something absolutely so dramatic that would just make me laugh and say, “is Hendrix even serious right now?”

It’s so dramatic, but it’s a story that feels like it KNOWS it’s dramatic and far fetched and presses into that. Truly, feels like an adult version (bcuz the characters are in their 40s) of a Goosebumps book.

I 100% could see this being made into a film. And the 4 stars is 100% for Hendrix’s writing, which is just fun and silly and comedic and truly good enough that I could FEEL every ounce of discomfort that Hendrix wanted me to feel in the tense moments. The pacing was amazing, the delivery of everything was so great, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

If anyone asked about reading this, I definitely would say “don’t take it seriously, just buckle in for the ride.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Gun violence, Death of parent, Gore, and Child death

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Murder

Minor: Alcoholism, Car accident, Cursing, and Grief

ninahuynh's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad 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

4.75

 Been wanting to read Grady Hendrix book after hearing all the hype around his writing and around this particular book, and I gotta say, it delivered! The gore. The blood. The puppet. It has you on your   toes while also wanting to curse the curse’d. The only thing I have issue with is

why do the parents, especially the mom, blame Freddie’s death on Nancy when them parents were the one leaving a seven-year-old child to look after her five-year-old brother? They should have also seen how they were also at fault.

Generational trauma, man. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Animal death, Body horror, Blood, Child death, Child abuse, Cursing, Violence, Death of parent, Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Self harm, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Murder

creepycrawlybookworm's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Gore, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Car accident, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Child abuse, Toxic relationship, Self harm, Alcohol, Child death, Pregnancy, Confinement, Death of parent, and Cursing