How to Sell a Haunted House, by Grady Hendrix. Penguin Random House, 2023

The first thing I’ve got to say is this: I’ve always been creeped out by puppets, and some dolls give me goosebumps, too. But the review in Book Page made this horror novel sound interesting, and the library had it via download, so I went for it.

As soon as Louise Joyner turned of age, she fled the home she grew up in. She didn’t stop fleeing until she couldn’t go any further without falling into the Pacific Ocean, and there she stayed, making the occasional, obligatory, trip back home for a few days. It’s not that she doesn’t love her parents- she does, very much- but rather that she just cannot function around them. They are a family built on secrets, and her parents were slightly neglectful in small ways- her father obsessed by his academic work, and her mother with her Christian puppet ministry and constant doll making, stitching away with her door closed. When she gets a phone call that her parents are dead, both dying in a car accident, she is stunned. This means leaving her daughter with her ex, meeting with her brother that she doesn’t get along with, and spending time in the house she grew up in, none of which she wants to do. But she gets on the plane and goes back east. Maybe she can get in and out quickly, and be back to her normal life in a few days.

Things go bad right off the bat. It’s creepy being in her childhood home alone, and she and her brother get into it right away. The creepiness goes into the supernatural almost immediately. It’s one of those stories where you think “Oh, no, don’t do that!” all the way through. The creep is not *just* supernatural; there are jump scares, and there is a LOT of body horror around both Louise and her brother. Violence fills the book, the kind of violence that you wouldn’t think a person could survive- certainly not survive and get back up and fight some more. Believe me when I say the tension never lets up- no matter what the narrative tries to tell you. Four stars.                                                                          

The Lake Boy, by Adam Roberts. NewCon Press, 2018

This is an odd bit of storytelling. It’s part ghost story, part alien abduction, and part depiction of the perils of same sex relationships in the past.

Cynthia lives with her minister brother, who keeps a wary eye on her, as she was recently caught in a same sex relationship, which is considered a mental illness as well as a moral failure. She spends her time translating old religious texts from the Latin and forming a relationship with one of the neighboring women. There is also the distraction of strange lights in the sky, which attracts a number of astronomers, one of which disappears for several days. Oh, and the ghost, of course.

When Cynthia is caught with her lover, the lover throws her under the bus and claims Cynthia assaulted her, which leads to Cynthia being sent to a mental hospital- which is when more strange things occur. Because this story is told with Cynthia as the narrator, we can only know what she knows- and she is regarded as delusional. Is her tale true, or the work of an unhinged mind? There are a lot of things happening in the story, and they don’t all really connect with each other. I have the feeling that I missed something along the way, because in the end the whole thing just left me baffled. Three stars.

Lipstick Voodoo, by Kristi Charish. Vintage Canada, 2018

Kincaid Strange can’t get a break. She’s a necromancer who raises the dead for a living. Like people who shoot the messenger, clients aren’t always pleased with what their dearly departed have to say when she raises them, and they take that out of Kincaid. So how to pay the rent is just her first worry… her roommate, Nathan Cade, has his own problems. He’s a ghost, but now he’s stuck in a zombie body that is rapidly breaking down. Kincaid has no idea how to help him. She’s being stalked by Gideon, the powerful ghost magician who kind of owns her after a mishap. Then there is her ex, Aaron, the Seattle cop who is on the supernatural beat. He’s come to her with the problem of a supernatural serial killer, one who is freezing their victims solid. Seattle PD has washed its hands of the supernatural bureau, so there is zero money in it for Kincaid and she finds herself in the freelancer’s usual position of ‘doing it for the exposure’.

I liked Kincaid, although with the constant action she really didn’t have much time to show many moods other than ‘exhausted’. I kind of liked Nate, but he’s immature (although trying) and the stalking of his ex meant he lost a lot of points with me. The ex-boyfriend/PD guy had no personality. Gideon has possibilities. I’ll be keeping an eye out for this new urban fantasy series. This is the second book in the series; I’ve not read the first one. Four stars.

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall, by Katie Alender. Point, 2015

Recipe for a Young Adult horror novel: Abandoned mental hospital for troubled girls: check. Dark power that has issues with being left behind: check. Teenaged narrator who is a troubled girl, with her parents not trusting her: check. Ghosts: check. Narrator who is killed in the first 100 pages but still has no problem narrating: wait, what?

Our narrator is Delia Piven, who has just inherited said abandoned mental hospital from an aunt she never met, but did correspond with for a short time. Aunt Cordelia lived in the asylum, but died outside the property, walking on the side of the road. Delia and her family here there for the week, to clean up the place and make it ready for sale. They will be “camping out” in the asylum during this time; that first night, all hell breaks loose. And that is pretty close to a literal statement; Delia is killed that first night.

Delia then spends time getting used to being a ghost- how to walk through walls, how to manipulate solids, mourning the loss of her family, friends, and dreams of her life ahead, and  getting to know the other ghosts (there’s a lot of them on the property). Some ghosts seem friendly; some are malevolent. And there is some evil power there that won’t let any of them go… not off the property or to where ever people go after they die. When Delia’s family returns, the evil comes to life, and Delia has to figure out how to defeat it to save her family.

There are some things that made me wonder, like why Delia could manipulate salt, even with cardboard, when no one else could get close to it, but I liked the book over all. Delia’s younger sister, an annoying tween in the first part, matures into kickass young woman. There is one young male ghost, but he’s just incidental, not a love interest and certainly not a hero who saves the day. It’s all about girl power! I’d call it thriller rather than horror, although there are certainly creepy moments, and it’s a quick, stay up all night, read. 

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Moving In, by Ron Ripley. Scare Street, 2016

After Brian has a heart attack before age 40, he and his wife Jenny move to the peaceful countryside to escape the stress of the city. He has reduced his workload and arranged to work from home; Jenny has a job in the new location. But peace is not what they find; immediately, Brian finds the basement door opening itself every time he closes- and latches- it. Then a dead body is found on his property. Next an invisible entity starts pouring him drinks in the kitchen, as if to say “Here, you’re going to need this!” Problems accelerate from there, as he finds a graveyard hidden in the basement and an evil entity in the barn. Things get worse from there, and a couple of psychics join the fray.

This is short for a novel. I had high hopes at first, with the opening doors and spooky things. But things moved extremely fast; too fast, really. Soon there are so many people, dead and alive, that it’s hard to follow who is who. While there is tension and danger, things get resolved a little too easily- although not without losses. This is the first of a series, and it has the flaws that a lot of introductory stories have. The characters aren’t developed at all, but they have some promise. It kind of reminded me of old pulp stories, really, which isn’t really a bad thing. 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- Amazon will give me a few cents. This did not in any way affect my review.