Reviews tagging 'Death'

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

145 reviews

thekeyescollection'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: Body horror, Violence, Animal death, and Death

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

sshpurple1's review against another edition

dark sad medium-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Blood

Moderate: Gore, Toxic relationship, Fire/Fire injury, Bullying, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Violence, Murder, and Death

Minor: Car accident

sshpurple1's review against another edition

dark sad medium-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Gore, Blood, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Abandonment, Death, Death of parent, and Gaslighting

dbooknerd's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

This book was creepy, this book was crazy, this book delivered. I actually lean more towards 4.25 or 4.5 stars. It has family secrets, family conflict, family forgiveness, and family love all wrapped around spookiness. It started a little slow at first but it continually builded with excitement and terror. I don’t want to give anything away, but it will have you looking different at old family homes and all that comes with them. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Gore, Death, Grief, and Vomit

Moderate: Blood

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

eliasaurus's review against another edition

dark funny tense fast-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

5.0

If I could give this book 10 stars I would. This was outstanding from start to finish. Hendrix goes for his typical mixture of horror and humor, and really pulls it off; the different tones really play up each other. This book is funny, and it's also scary and creepy and, at times, disturbing.

It's a story about a haunted house, yes, but it's also about family, and, I think most fundamentally, it's about grief. It's about how "time only moves in one direction, no matter how hard we wish it wasn't so." A word of caution: maybe d n't read it right now if you've recently lost someone, or are dealing with a departed family member's estate or selling their house. I'm in the latter camp and the final paragraphs really destroyed me (in a good way, because the author really truly understands what it feels like, but boy did it hurt).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Body horror, Blood, and Grief

Moderate: Child death

brittburkard's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Body horror, Gore, and Child death

bg_oseman_fan's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.5

this book was not what i was expecting based on the title. I initially put it down part way through, but ended up picking it back up and reading to the finish. The writing of the action scenes was not very engaging. I found the attempts to create tension really repetitive such that the twists never really grabbed. as horror, this book didn’t get me. as a story about trauma and intergenerational relationships, i was hooked. 

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Gun violence, Car accident, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic relationship, Child death, and Medical content

Minor: Child abuse, Alcohol, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, and Self harm

magellen's review against another edition

emotional sad slow-paced

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

2.0

Boring. So so slow and so boring. Like it feels as if he wanted to build a book off the way we all feel regarding the scary clown in Poltergeist mixed with generational trauma but it all went flat in the bake. Grady tells tells tells with zero show (honestly does no one ctrl+f for FEELS FEELING FELT with his work?) And even the highest points of emotion are BORING as wallpaper paste.

If you think you've guessed the situation in the early chapters, after a couple mentions of Pumpkin,  welp. You're right. It is as straightforward as it seems and never builds tension so much as trips over attempts. It isn't funny either, despite many attempts. It feels like a half assed attempt frankly, cause as awful as SBCGKV w/e was, it was slightly more creative.
That said

again with buring people out back shit? Again?even the *edgy* bits of *scary* are boring repeats.

I was gonna give it 3.5 originally but no. I thought I was half way at 33%, and almost done when there was another 4+ hours of audio book. 
It is SLOW and without substance, try literally anything else in his body of work and you'll be at least slightly less disappointed. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Death