304 pages
English language
Published July 10, 2022 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.
“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories -- she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there.
Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back, and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting… but who else could it possibly be?
There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them, and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.
This is my third Sarah Gailey book, and every single time I finish one, I think "That woman has lived through some shit, I hope she's ok."
Just Like Home is a book about good and evil and belonging and terror and growing up and death and family, but not in the ways I expected.
Wow this one is hard. Prob a 4.5 rounded up to 5 stars. I reeeeaaaaaallllly struggled with the first maybe 3/4 of this. I say I like haunted house stories but maybe I don’t. Haha. At least not the thematic purposes of them. It is usually dealing with some sort of family dysfunction and that always bums me out too much for me to appreciate its value. It does have value. I just don’t want to go there. And this book was HEAVY on the dysfunction with just little sprinkles of possible supernatural forces. In the end, that’s what makes this book Good with a capital G - it has real substance to it, something more than entertainment value alone. I wouldn’t say there are any real twists but there’s certainly a lot of options for what is really happening (or did happen) throughout, making it almost a thriller at …
Wow this one is hard. Prob a 4.5 rounded up to 5 stars. I reeeeaaaaaallllly struggled with the first maybe 3/4 of this. I say I like haunted house stories but maybe I don’t. Haha. At least not the thematic purposes of them. It is usually dealing with some sort of family dysfunction and that always bums me out too much for me to appreciate its value. It does have value. I just don’t want to go there. And this book was HEAVY on the dysfunction with just little sprinkles of possible supernatural forces. In the end, that’s what makes this book Good with a capital G - it has real substance to it, something more than entertainment value alone. I wouldn’t say there are any real twists but there’s certainly a lot of options for what is really happening (or did happen) throughout, making it almost a thriller at points. It’s worth noting that Gailey has become one of my favorite contemporary authors and it’s because their work is always on the literary end but mostly likes to play around with genre elements. Boy are they playing here. Anyway, I wasn’t sold on the book until about 40 pages from the end. Normally that would mean I would not be recommending it but…. I don’t know. There’s something about Gailey. They always manage to bend things around enough that I end up liking it. The ending here is really great, and all the weird little breadcrumbs come together nicely (except maybe one storyline) to stick the landing with a fun - if maybe a little macabre and morally questionable - conclusion. It leaves you uncertain about what you wanted, but in a way that just adds to the experience. So yeah. I guess I’ll be telling people to read it, even if I may feel like I need to give a few warnings first.
