Grady Hendrix’s How to Sell a Haunted House is a fun, albeit fairly uneven, addition to the horror renaissance that we’re apparently living in the middle of.
Fun, because there is a good plot here. And Hendrix clearly has a sense of humor and isn’t afraid to wield it (the back matter especially captures the fun that should go along with a good scary story). He also either very obviously has a religious background, or has done his homework well. He knows what goes on in churches, how cultural Christianity operates, and what vaguely religious people think about ghosts and demons and what-have-you.
The plot here is pretty straightforward. Louise and Mark are nearly-estranged siblings who have to sell their parents’ house after a tragic car crash. But when they start trying to clean the place out, they find out that perhaps there is something going on with the room full of hand-made puppets (not quite as creepy as it sounds–their mother had a church puppet ministry). Do they keep moving around? And what’s in the boarded-up attic? And why did the squirrel nativity come to life and try to kill Louise?
Again, this is a fun story.
But it is also an uneven story. Primarily because of the pacing, the book moves in fits and starts. Structured around the five stages of grief (or the five love languages or whatever–whichever one anger and denial fit in with), the plot stutters a bit that makes me wonder if it started out as a blog series or relied on AI for transitions or, well, I don’t know. I’m not an author. (And since Hendrix has published multiple works and I haven’t, take this criticism with a grain of salt.) I don’t want to give the plot away so I won’t go into details other than to say a bit of tightening up would have served this book well.
That said, it is a fun book. What’s more, there’s a serious engagement with the afterlife and religion that we don’t often see in modern novels. We see the need for forgiveness, reconciliation, and above all truth. All things we don’t hear much in modern culture, and which are all front and center here.
So do give this a read if you get the chance, and keep an eye on Grady Hendrix. I suspect we’re going to see some great stuff coming our way on top of the good stuff we’ve already got from him.
Dr. Coyle Neal co-hosts the City of Man Podcast and is an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog). He teaches Political Science, Philosophy, and History in Southwest Missouri.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In