Books › How to Sell a Haunted House
How to Sell a Haunted House
413 pages
A darkly funny, puppet-infested nightmare about the horrors of real estate, grief, and the siblings you can't escape.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like walking into your childhood home and realizing everything you left behind has grown teeth. It balances on a razor's edge between laugh-out-loud camp and genuine, pulse-pounding terror, driven by a propulsive energy that makes it impossible to put down. The atmosphere is thick with claustrophobia and the specific, suffocating dread of dealing with a deceased parent's hoarded belongings. Beneath the visceral scares and creepy-crawly puppet horror lies a surprisingly tender exploration of sibling rivalry and the messy, nonlinear nature of grief. The prose is sharp and accessible, grounding the supernatural chaos in deeply relatable family dysfunction. It is a perfect fit for readers who love their haunted house tropes served with a side of dark humor, emotional catharsis, and pure nightmare fuel.
- Mood
- claustrophobic
- unsettling
- campy
- dread-soaked
- Tone
- darkly comedic
- irreverent
- anxious
- earnest
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- sibling estrangement · processing grief · childhood trauma · the burden of inheritance
- The writing
- Sharp, accessible, and laced with a biting wit that balances visceral horror with grounded family dynamics.
- The arc
- Moves from bitter, grief-fueled resentment into sheer, escalating terror, ultimately resolving in a hard-won, bloody reconciliation.
- Who it's for
- Fans of horror who love messy family drama mixed with supernatural chaos and a healthy dose of dark humor.
Content notes
- grief
- death of a parent
- gore
- body horror
- automaton/doll phobia
About the book
When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them...
Description from Open Library.
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