Gailey’s descriptions of the house suggest something alive, something that “groans” and “breathes.” Vera discovers strange gouges in the walls that look almost like wounds. Sarah Gailey does a great job of keeping the reader on edge for the entire book, and this is one of the book’s best elements, the sense that things just aren’t quite right inside Crowder House. As the days pass and Daphne continues to cling to life, Vera begins to wonder: is the house trying to get her to leave? Or does it want her to stay forever? And back in her childhood bedroom, Vera is having disturbing nightmares, and something seems to be in the room with her, stealing the covers off her bed at night and even moving the bed.Īs Vera makes her way through the house, packing up her parents’ belongings, she comes across odd things from the past that remind her of the year when she was thirteen and the terrible events that sent her father to prison. An avant-garde artist named James Duvall lives in the backyard shed, paying Daphne for the chance to “absorb the essence of the house” to use in his work. Vera’s mother is camped out in the dining room, subsisting on nothing but lemonade. But when she steps foot in the front door, Vera is assaulted by memories from the past. Vera hasn’t been back to Crowder House in twelve years, but her mother Daphne is dying, and so she reluctantly agrees to come home and settle her mother’s affairs and prepare the family home for sale. I’m going to keep this as spoiler free as possible (which isn’t easy to do!). But the story worked its way under my skin, and Gailey’s moody and oppressive setting was creepy and unsettling in all the best ways. The characters are problematic and do upsetting things, and to be honest I didn’t really like any of them.

I spent most of the book trying to figure out WTF was going on, and when the answers were finally revealed, they were not at all what I was expecting. This is a ghost story, a domestic thriller, a murder mystery, a coming of age story and a twisty psychological horror story all rolled into one. Just Like Home was much much weirder than I expected, but I’ve come to realize that Sarah Gailey’s books cannot be easily shoehorned into tidy genre boxes. This was the goldfish tank where she’d grown to the size she would always be, even after her mother gave her away to the world.” This was the house her father had built with his two strong hands. “The outside of Vera was shaped like the inside of this house. The nitty-gritty: Gailey’s latest is delightfully unsettling, with unexpected twists, dangerous characters and ominous secrets.

This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Just like home sarah gailey book review