Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - How to Sell a Haunted House

Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

52 reviews

samburkhouse's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny mysterious 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

4.5

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rowancdewit's review against another edition

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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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shannonbauchat's review against another edition

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3.5

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lovelymisanthrope's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

I was originally saving this book to read during peak spooky season in October, but I could not resist picking it up during Summerween.
"How to Sell a Haunted House" follows Louise, a single mom to a beautiful, young daughter. Louise left her life in Charleston behind for a new life on the west coast, and she hardly looks back. Especially because she has a very strained relationship with her younger brother, Mark. Louise feels like her parents favored Mark and always made his life easier, and Louise is resentful. One night, completely out of the blue, Mark calls Louise to inform her that both of their parents were killed in a car accident. Now, Louise and Mark have to decide together what to do with their parents' home, filled to the brim with puppets that haunted their childhoods.
Prior to reading this novel, I was quite ambivalent towards puppets, but now, I am kind of weary. These puppets are so unsettling, and especially the fact that there are so many in one home. Learning how much their mom loved one particular puppet, Pumpkin, makes the story all the more unsettling.
One of my favorite aspects of this book was the brother sister dynamic between Louise and Mark. Their relationship is very strained, and it is not too far off to say that they really hate each other at the beginning. I even really empathized with Louise in the beginning because Mark seemed like such a wreck of a human being. But the more I learned about the story and the more I learned what Louise did not know, made me really grow to enjoy Mark as a character, and feel badly for him. I ended up really rooting for them to work together and mend their relationship.
As with all of Grady Hendrix's books, this story is unsettling and has some very graphic scenes. There is one particular scene involving a needle that I cannot erase from my brain, no matter how much I try. I really enjoyed this story, and I will forever pick up Grady Hendrix's titles in the future.

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ninahuynh's review against another edition

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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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avidreaderandgeekgirl's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad 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? No

3.0

What a VERY weird and creepy AF book! It was bizarre, and puppets have always creeped me out! But I did like the twist with the puppet. I HATED the MCs for the book's first quarter, especially Mark, but he improved once the book got going. I would not recommend eating while reading this book as it gets gorey at parts and pretty violent as well. Pumpkin got extremely annoying at parts. Overall, it was an okay book, that did keep me engaged. It was better than the other book of his I read which I DNF'd.

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