Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

 

JUST LIKE HOME is one of the weirdest horror novels I've ever read, but I really liked it. Vera is an emotionally stunted young woman who grew up in pretty terrible circumstances: her mother was abusive and distant and her father was loving but also a serial killer. Now her childhood home, Crowder House, is a place of spectacle and speculation. When Vera's mother asks her to return home, an avalanche of old memories is released, tying Vera to her traumatic past and the dark secrets that still lurk in the house's even darker shadows.

I loved the writing style of this book. It was so evocative and visceral and gritty and gross. Body horror is something I have a hard time with usually, but the way Gailey couched it in all this metaphorical, poetic language made it feel almost like fairytale violence. I also liked how this book straddles several genres of horror-- serial killer, haunted house, family secrets, moral corruption, splatterpunk, monsters. Go in expecting fluids and trauma for sure, but prepare yourself for an ending that is probably more touching than you'd suspect.

4 out of 5 stars