A review by undersea
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

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

2.5

I loved The Echo Wife. I love gothic horror. I love a weird book. And everyone says that’s what this book is. I disagree. 

Ok so…Vera clearly spent her whole life looking for love that she wasn’t getting from her mother from her father. And the house as a sentient being is a metaphor for all the trauma that it literally held inside its walls. And it also becomes the love that she was constantly looking for. The metaphors make sense.  What I don’t understand was basically any of Vera’s motivations. Her mother was absolutely horrible to her, why come back at all? Why is she CONSTANTLY shocked at her mother’s behavior, past & present? Why doesn’t she understand why people don’t want her, the daughter of a serial killer, around? Why is she shocked at Brandon’s response to seeing her. She literally tried to kill him. Even if she very much believed in the lore her parents were spinning, it’s like she has no awareness of the outside world. She’s constantly befuddled. She has zero agency & honestly a very unhealthy obsession of her father even in the present when she supposedly knows that murder is bad. The CONSTANT descriptions of the “solid floors/doors/walls” that her father “carefully, lovingly built for her” even as a child was odd & completely uninterigated. I get that she was fighting being a killer herself but I still do not understand her bewilderment. In all her years away it’s apparent she never once looked back on her childhood and analyzed what happened or was even curious. I don’t understand why the artist was bad, simply b/c he was taking apart the house. His character was so flat. All of them were. None of their motivations made sense.
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