Grady Hendrix, one of my favorite authors, is a magician. And by magician, I mean, Hendrix is very good at the art of deception. He lures you into his stories with pulply setups - a haunted IKEA, a vampire crashing a book club, and a sister and brother trying to sell the possibly haunted house of their parents - and then throws you a curve ball. Sure, his books are pulpy, and funny (that's part of the appeal) but they also have a lot of depth and heart. Hendrix's latest, How to Sell a Haunted House, does just this. It blends pulp horror with a Stephen King like chronicle of generational trauma and human drama—plus haunted puppets.

Louise Joyner reluctantly returns home to Charleston, South Carolina, after her estranged brother, Mark, called her up with the news of her parents death. Louise and Mark's relationship isn't the best. The underachieving Mark is already plotting to cheat her out of her half of the house, while their aunts try to make peace between the two. Nevertheless, Louise presses on and attempts to get rid of the hundreds of dolls their mother, Nancy, made, collected, curated, and obsessed over. (In fact, Nancy ran a Christian puppet ministry).Louise yearns for her 5-year-old daughter, Poppy, but she has to get her parents house ready to go on the market. And while collective grief and trauma introduce the tale, Hendrix wastes no time dialing in the fear factor. Louise soon finds herself thinking that her parents house is haunted and it is in fact, in a way, haunted. Louise and Mark quickly find out they are being tormented by Pupkin, their mother’s very favorite puppet­. Pupkin is newly prone to temper tantrums and homicidal rage when he doesn’t get what he wants—and since he can’t yet conceptualize that Nancy is dead, he just wants her back home with him. And he'll do what he has to, to get what he wants - including going after Mark and Poppy.

How to Sell a Haunted House is an enthralling, bloody, funny, and tragic story about buried family secrets and weird puppet collectives. It's entertaining, brutal, and ultimately touching. It's another great Hendrix novel full of weird pulpy horror and genuine characters. Pupkin is scary because of how much he acts like a child. He's not necessarily as deranged as Chucky or as horrifying as Pennywise, but is terrifying in his own, weird way - a puppet that has murderous tendencies - tends to be pretty freaky. Puppets are one of the few things that genuinely frighten me, so this ticked my boxes in that category.

Come for the possessed killer puppets, stay for a story about processing generational trauma and the healing power of family.



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I thought that this one was entertaining. I like the concept of generational trauma, and how it effects future generations. I was not expecting demonic puppet - possessions, but I guess when dealing with a haunted house, you need to have some form of demonic possession que no? ( )

Good book. A bit overwritten, but not by much. Not sure if I would read anything else by this author. Again, good book. But I am glad I got it from the library and didn't buy it. Mark & Louise should have simply let the mover clean out the house completely, including all the dolls. If they did this, as Mark originally wanted to do, all of this could have been avoided. Another suggestion would have been to simply take all the dolls in the backyard and torch every single one of them. Problem solved. Sell the house. Go home. Be with your kid. No more problems. ( )

How to Sell a Haunted House is a horror story and not my usual genre, but I read it for a book club, and it had some interesting features. The author deals with adult sibling rivalry in a fascinating attempt to depict the horrors of unresolved childhood conflict between parents and siblings.

Louise and Mark Joyner, sister and brother, are overcome with grief when their parents die but express their feelings very differently. Each has difficulty understanding the other’s perspective and needs. Louise found it incredulous to accept that her mother had favored Mark and not her. Of course, coming to terms with their childhood demons is a challenge when they don’t agree on many of the facts.

Nancy, their mother, had been a Christian puppeteer, and the house that she and their father, Eric, abandon when they die seems genuinely haunted to Mark and Louise. This brother/sister duo is forced to confront the puppets that had terrorized them during childhood and adolescence. One puppet, Pupkin, is particularly menacing. Pupkin had played an integral role in Nancy’s mothering and upbringing of her children. Coming to grips with Pupkin and his determination to torment the family is central to the plot of How to Sell a Haunted House.

From a literary point of view, the brother/sister relationship was well developed and stood the test of rounded characters. Also, the section headings, which loosely mimic the widely accepted stages of grief, provide a great “skeleton” for the book. In addition to providing some unsettling, horrific scenes involving puppets and squirrels, Hendrix delves into family miscommunications. I found the characters relatable as they experience difficulties finding common ground with estranged family members. If you read this book, consider how many characters are hiding behind the masks of puppets and how parenting styles continue through generations.

This one thoroughly surprised me! It was stranger than I could have imagined and I loved every bit of it. The family dynamics and the way the book was structured highlighting the stages of grief really tickled the therapist-part of me :) ( )