★★★★
Quick Summary
Louise and her brother Mark have to sell their parent’s house after said parents passed away. The mum has been making puppets and dolls her whole life. Louise and Mark have a strained relationship to say the least, but they come together when it turns out selling the house will not be as easy as they both hoped, as they forgot to ask some of the house’s inhabitants…
Fast Facts
Setting: present day, Charleston, USA
Genre: horror
Tropes and themes: troubled family, spooky objects
Review (spoiler free part)
I think this is one of the first horrors that I’ve read that weren’t of the classical sort (think Dracula, Poe’s short stories and other Gothic literature). And I enjoyed it! But it also made me realise what I don’t really look for in my horror readings.
First of all, I really enjoyed the writing. It was easy to read and except for one specific phrase that was repeated three times (hello, ripping off the Band Aid), nothing bothered me about it. I feel like the characters and their specific points of view were really well built and the author worked well with making the reader dislike and then like characters as the story progressed. I liked the family environment and their struggles and troubles and traumas. I enjoyed the general pacing, I feel like the introduction before we delved into the darkness was just the right length and each part of the story got just about the space it deserved. The plot twists were also cool, even though by the end I kind of anticipated a few of them.
What I didn’t enjoy as much was the amount of explicit violence. Being used to more subtle ways of creating suspence and fear, I found out I prefer it that way really.
Do I recommend? Yes. It’s a well written horror book and even though it’s not really groundbreaking in its use of horror tropes (cursed objects, troubled family), it still uses them in a gripping way where you want to find out why and how are things happening and how is everything going to get solved (and the explanation is satisfactory). There are some really creepy parts that make your blood run cold and for fans of more violent horror, there’s some of that too.
I haven’t ready any of Grady Hendrix’s other books, so I cannot say how they compare. I want to try look into them though, because I enjoy his writing, I have to do some research if they all contain the same amount of brutality ahead though.
Okay, time to discuss specific scenes and aspects.
I struggled through the action scenes where Mark and Louise are chased by the cursed puppet Pupkin. One, because reading about needles in eyes and hands being sawed off was a bit too much for me. Two, because I got confused about who is where as I admit, I didn’t carefully read every single line and then I was getting lost (especially in the final showdown scene). My bad probably.
I really loved the plot twist where it turns out Louise has been an unreliable narrator throughout the beginning and that maybe Mark isn’t as big of an arsehole as he looks. Or maybe he is, but that he kind of has his reasons. By the end, I kind of saw it coming that Pupkin is actually the deceased kid Freddie, but the moment where it was revealed was still so satisfying.
When it turned out at the end, that Pupkin is just a little boy scared to die and Louise sees Freddie walking out into the light, I admit I was tearing up. There is honestly some dissonance between reading about a puppet trying to hammer you to death and then feeling compassing, tearing up because “he’s just a small kid”, but that just sometimes happens, right.
And last thing I wanted to highlight was Mark’s story about travelling with the street entertainers and turning into Pupkin using masks. That was so damn creepy, it had some serious horror Fight Club/Magnus Archives vibes! Well done.
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