Rating: 4/5

In How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix, we meet Louise, a single mother living in California, far away from her parents and brother. When her parents pass away, Louise flies home to Charleston to be with family and deal with the estate. Louise immediately gets a bad vibe when she sets foot into her parents’ house. Something seems off, and the plethora of puppets and dolls in the house are only part of the problem.

Louise has a contentious relationship with her brother, Mark. They get into a fight in front of the junk removal guy who Mark hired to clean up their parents’ house, and it becomes clear that there’s a reason Louise wanted to go to the other side of the country to get away from him.

How to Sell a Haunted House is a phenomenally gory, compelling story. It initially starts out a bit slow, but it picks up after the first few dozen pages. Hendrix is an expert at creating complex characters. (Hendrix does a great job of writing women. That may sound like a weird compliment, but he writes women as humans.) We learn that Louise may have some demons and secrets in her past, and perhaps Mark isn’t a total screw up.

This book deals with family secrets and repression. Louise’s extended family refuses to talk about certain family trauma, and without knowing about it, there is no way Louise can battle whatever’s gripping the house. This book illustrates that pushing down the bad feelings doesn’t get rid of them; they just manifest in other more painful and dangerous ways.

There are some incredibly gruesome, visceral moments in this book. I haven’t read all of Hendrix’s books, but this is definitely the goriest work of his that I’ve read. But it isn’t gratuitous; it all furthers the plot, even the really gross life-changing thing that happens. (Believe me, you’ll know what I’m talking about when you read this.)

The title initially felt misleading to me, but it eventually makes sense. If you’re expecting something like Mexican Gothic or The Haunting of Hill House, this may not be exactly what you want. But if you’re looking for a captivating story about life, death, and secrets, How to Sell a Haunted House is a must-read book. Fans of Hendrix’s other novels will enjoy this most recent work.

Rating: 3.5/5 

Note: Do not read this review if you haven’t read My Heart is a Chainsaw. There will be spoilers. 

Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones is the sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw. It picks up a few years after the eventful Fourth of July that shook Proofrock. Readers get to follow Jade Daniels as she tackles a new monster: a serial killer named Dark Mill South.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw was remarkable because it had so much heart. Jones explores Jade’s life, her trauma, and how it shaped her worldview. Throughout the book, readers have a raw and up-close look at how Jade managed to deal with horrors she’d experienced. Unfortunately, Don’t Fear the Reaper does not have the same heart as its predecessor.

Part of this is because the perspective shifts throughout the novel. By the time readers start to like a character, that person is killed off. (Don’t be surprised by that…it’s a slasher!) And because of the numerous perspective shifts, it is hard to get into a character’s psyche. It also is difficult to root for characters when we don’t get to spend much time with them.

Final girls are powerful because we can see their mistakes and their near misses. We get a taste of their raw desire to live and ability to fight. But when the story shifts away from the final girl for significant amounts of time, we lose the joy and investment in her.

That said, the parts of the book that focused on Jade were fantastic. In addition to fighting Dark Mill South, Jade is also fighting herself. (In fact, she’d like to be called Jennifer now, not Jade.) But she has to grapple with the fact that Jennifer is Jade, and the ugly parts of her life ultimately led her to become who she is now. It would have been great to have more of the book focus on the battle of Jade vs. herself.

The friendship between Jade and Leetha Mondragon is one of the more compelling and heartwarming aspects of this story. In My Heart Is a Chainsaw, we see the beginnings of friendship between the popular girl and the outcast. This book furthers their friendship, and we see Jade come to terms with the fact that she can’t survive without some help.

It would be worthwhile to reread My Heart Is a Chainsaw before picking up this book. I had forgotten some parts of book one of this trilogy. (Yes, there’s a third one coming!) That said, Jones does a great job of giving context so you won’t be totally lost. I would not recommend reading this if you haven’t read the first book in the series.

Even though I preferred the first book in this series more than Don’t Fear the Reaper, Jade Daniels is still my final girl. 

Rating: 2.5/5 Films That Never Get Made

Couples meet in a variety of ways: at work, through mutual friends, and on dating apps. But the most successful way to meet your soulmate is to set up auditions for a film that will never get made and pick the hottest applicant. (What, like your love life is perfect?) That last meet cute is what happens in Audition by Ryu Murakami.

Aoyama, a widower, is encouraged by his son to find a wife. Aoyama’s filmmaker friend suggests hosting auditions for a film that will never be made. Aoyama can’t get one applicant, Yamasaki Asami, out of his mind. On paper she is perfect, and she’s completely captivating in person.

But she has a mysterious past. Some things she’s said about her life turn out to be untrue, but Aoyama’s rose-colored glasses prevent him from seeing the red flags, and it may be too late.

Audition is an interesting story, but it’s lacking backstory. We eventually learn a bit more about Yamasaki’s past, but we don’t learn about why she does what she does. (We don’t need a full biography, but something simple like how Halloween tells us about Michael Myers would’ve been great.)

It is a short book, but not much happens for the first ¾ of the book. The end picks up much more and is full of the gory scenes we all love, but it is a very slow burn. Additionally, the characters don’t have much depth. We don’t get to see much about the personalities of Aoyama, his son, or Yamasaki. It is a short book, but readers aren’t able to classify any characters in any meaningful way, e.g., Aoyama is lazy or Yamasaki would do anything for a good corndog.

Because of this lack of character depth, there was no one to root for, making it hard to get invested in the story. Aoyama came up with a weird way to find a wife and seemed to mostly be after Yamasaki’s looks, so I didn’t really care if anything bad happened to him. And Yamasaki remained a strange and mysterious person, so it’s hard to know why she does the strange things she does. (That said, I usually root for women, so I guess I’m Team Yamasaki.)

Audition was originally published in Japanese, and I read an English translation. Perhaps it’s the translation, but much of the foreshadowing felt clunky. It became pretty clear early on what Yamasaki might be up to, and it was also obvious that certain props would be crucial to the plot.

While the concept of this story is interesting and the ending of the book is violent and gross in all the right ways, the characters fell flat and the exposition dragged. But if you’re looking for a quick read that will gross you out, check out Audition. It won’t make you view life from a new perspective or change the way you think, but it might scratch that itch for gore.

Rating: 4/5 Spiders

If you were being held captive and a scary, violent illness infected everyone around you, what would you do? Would you think it’s bad luck? Is it some kind of biological warfare? Or is it a demon’s wrath?

In Alma Katsu’s The Fervor, Meiko and her daughter, Aiko, are in an internment camp where something is going around that makes people sick and violent and eventually kills them. It soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary sickness; something sinister is happening, and Meiko and Aiko may be the only people who can figure out what it is and stop it. 

The Fervor is a haunting and beautiful story about forgiveness, racism, and pain. Katsu is an expert at writing about real historical events with tact and compassion. She doesn’t sensationalize or downplay the horrors of the camps. She captures the real terrors of the internment camps and imagines horrors caused by the fictional mysterious illness spread through the camp.

The Fervor explores themes of redemption, family, and forgiveness. Throughout the book, Archie Mitchell, a friend of Meiko’s family, grapples with his betrayal of her family and struggles to redeem himself. The Fervor explores what it takes to earn forgiveness and how to forgive yourself.

The most compelling (but most devastating) element of the book is the way Katsu writes about racism against Asian Americans. The parallels to the hate crimes and violence many Asian Americans face, especially in light of COVID-19, are upsetting and show how this country really hasn’t come that far. You have to read The Fervor’s Afterword; it explores some of the violent attacks Asians have experienced in the United States, and she challenges the notion that atrocities that happen in other countries “can’t happen here.”

The Fervor is a must-read book for history fans. If you liked Alma Katsu’s other books, you’ll love The Fervor. 

Rating: 4/5 Student Filmmakers

Night Shoot by David Sodergren follows a group of student filmmakers who have the opportunity to shoot their movie in Crawford Manor, an old home owned by one of the students’ uncles. The uncle is clear that they need to leave by a certain time so he can lock up the home, and he cannot allow them to stay longer. But when the lead actress quits, it’s clear that the limited time they can be in Crawford Manor will not suffice, so they have the brilliant idea of breaking into it after the uncle locks up. What could possibly go wrong?

Night Shoot is such a fun slasher story. Any fans of slasher films will enjoy this book; it pokes a lot of fun at the sexism often seen in the genre. Sodergren leverages a lot of slasher tropes to write a vivid and interesting story, but there are loads of twists and turns along the way, and it’s anything but predictable.

The pacing of Night Shoot is perfect. Readers get action and scares from the beginning, and the creepy tone of the novel is set immediately. And through it is an action-filled book, the characters are fully formed and Sodergren does a great job of giving backstory and character development in a way that keeps the plot moving forward.

Anyone who likes slasher stories needs to read Night Shoot.