A review by bklassen
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

Grady Hendrix, you old sun of a gun! 

This one scared me so much that I actually went out to find spoilers because I was so tense and apprehensive. Kudos to you, Hendrix. 

This book is about the consequences of denial, secrets, and childhood trauma. Sweeping things under the rug never helps anyone, and the longer things fester, the worse they get. 

I loved how Hendrix redeemed the brother, Mark. From Louise’s POV, Mark was clearly the bad guy, a failure in life, and solely there to torment her. Then as the book goes on, you see that thread of secrets and trauma wound around the two siblings’ relationship and how it soured them. True friendship and healing couldn’t begin until they faced reality, opened up, and told the truth. You also get to see the past from Mark’s perspective and how everyone deals with trauma in different ways. Your concept of someone is purely based on your perception of them, but that’s all we really have to judge on. Once Mark opens up about his past, Louise can see him more for who he is and understand why he acted the way he did. 

I did hate Mark in the beginning, and I did think that their family was very strange, and I also felt secondhand anger at the fights and pettiness between the two siblings who had one of the most dysfunctional relationships I’ve seen depicted. 

This book had an absolutely bonkers premise that scared me half to death at times, and I did like the somewhat unconventional structure, which follows the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I know that the model is actually referential to a person facing their own mortality and upcoming loss and not grief of a loved one, and that everyone experiences a different order and combination, but it’s still a nice framework for the book that uses shorthand for grief that everyone is familiar with. 

As usual, the depth of characters and bananas story makes this a wild ride that I enjoyed every second of. 

Oh, and puppets and dolls will never not be scary, and that’s a fact.