Sarah Gailey’s “Just Like Home”

A haunted house novel that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Just Like Home is Sarah Gailey’s new gothic horror/haunted house novel that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s a spooky tale of body-horror and homecoming that’s full of twists and turns and unexpected villains and heroes.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250174703/justlikehome

Vera’s father Francis Crowder was a serial killer, but he loved her. He built the house she grew up in with his own hands, including the soundproofed basement. He did bad things, and he went to prison for them, and Vera never saw him again.

After her father was arrested, she continued to live in the house he’d built, with her mother, Daphne — who kicked her out and bolted the door behind her the day Vera graduated from high school. Ever since, Vera has drifted from town to town, job to job. Once the people in the new place figure out who she is, she has to leave. No one wants to be around Francis Crowder’s daughter.

Daphne is dying, and she’s sent for Vera. Daphne still lives in Francis Crowder’s house, which she has turned into a tourist-trap for ghoulish thrillseekers, supplementing her income by housing a succession of mediums, true-crime weirdos and “artists” in a shed…