Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this book early.

This story is written from the perspective of a child, which honestly was very hard to follow along with. There wasn’t any quotations when characters spoke and the conversations jumped back and fourth too much. Not having the quotations made it hard to follow along with at times. I do like that it’s from the child’s perspective, I think it needed to be told that way, but it still was very hard to read because of that.

I did get scared a few times throughout the book, however, I was extremely dissatisfied with the ending. It ended so abruptly that I was turning the page wondering where the next chapter was. I could 100% see this getting turned into a movie, which I think will make it easier for people to follow along.

For some reason I also thought it was too short. I feel like not a lot happened, and I think a big part of that is cause of how it ended.

I probably wouldn’t try to read this again, it was too difficult to keep up with.

Will be posted 5/4/24 on Instagram.com/michellereadsthrillers

📖 Review: Incidents Around The House by Josh Malerman
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was such a fun haunting story and it actually creeped me out! Every crack/creak I heard around my house I swear something was coming to get me. 😂

👧🏼🏠👹👻

This story is from the POV of a child named Bela. Bela is haunted by an entity she calls “other mommy.” Whenever Bela is approached by other mommy she is asked “can I go into your heart?” Bela and her parents try their best to keep other mommy away but she is determined to get the answer to her question!

Pub Date: June 25, 2024

Thank you @netgalley and @randomhouse for approving my request for this ARC!

#incidentsaroundthehouse #joshmalerman
#arcreader #arcbook #booksbooksbooks #bookworm #bookstagram #booklover #horrorbooks #readmorehorror

This book was amazing!! I could not put it down! At first the way the words are in the book when the little girl Bela speaks threw me off, but it gives so much character to the story! I fell in love with the characters and couldn’t wait to finish reading to find out what happens. It is one of the scariest books I have read. The details given in the book make it easy to picture everything. I wish this was a movie! This book had me addicted with the very first chapter. If you enjoy scary books, this one is for you!

Thank you so much to NetGalley for an e-ARC of this book. I was so excited to read this because I loved Malerman's Bird Box so much. Unfortunately, Incidents Around the House fell flat for me, and I had a tough time getting through it. The story is told from the perspective of eight year old Bela. The actual book never states Bela's age, but it's states in the blurb that she is eight. At times, I felt she read as younger, like maybe, only five or so. There is a time when she mentions having a hard time reaching the potty, among other things. That doesn't seem right for an eight year old to me. I also didn't like that all of the dialogue was without quotation marks, but I thought I could overlook it if I got into the story. A lot of the hauntings got repetitive and just weren't that interesting after the first couple of times. The mom and dad characters also both were unlikable. The whole story, I was trying to figure out what was causing the haunting and how it could possibly be stopped. All of my guesses were wrong, but the actual reason was incredibly lame imo. Yes, it would be a big deal to a child living it, but to me, the reader, it was a snooze. The ending was also disatisfying and disappointing.

This was super creepy. I didn't love reading the story from the child's POV. Also, didn't love the ending.

Thank you to Netgalley & Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Del Rey for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Malerman channels the creepiness of a Goosebumps book and the sense of wrongness of Coraline to make the monster in the closet scary again. This is one of the spine-tinglingest books I’ve read since I was a kid. I never felt comfortable with it in my hands. The child narrator and use of form gave this book a unique rhythm that added to the scares — kind of like how House of Leaves uses white space, but more musical than spacial. The characters are solid and complex as they guide us through moral quandaries and explorations of the magic of being a child and how we lose that magic as we age. Just a knockout book. Highly recommend. I imagine it’ll be incredible as an audiobook.

I found myself anxiously turning each page, waiting to see what was in store for Bela. The imagery and voice were a perfect combination to keep my heart racing. I thought I was afraid of the dark before, but that feeling has been cranked up to 11!

"<I>Can I go into your heart?</I>"

note: I was provided an advance copy by NetGalley.

Maybe between 3 and 4 stars...

<B>Incidents Around the House</B> by Josh Malerman follows a young girl named Bela whose interactions with an entity she calls Other Mommy escalate when Bela routinely refuses to give her a positive answer when Other Mommy asks her persistent, increasingly intense question: "Can I got into your heart?" When the Other Mommy's presence is noticed by adults, Bela's world is turned upside down as the adults try to figure out exactly what is Bela, and how to deal with it.

This book was a mixed bag for me. I greatly dislike it when authors don't use dialogue tags, and that was no exception here--it did get a little more tolerable in scenes where only two characters were speaking, and I do think that it was intended to help the reader be placed in the mindset of a child... but once you get into larger scenes with multiple characters, back-and-forth dialogue, etc, it became frustrating to read.

There are some genuine scares here, and I think the build up to them was fantastic. Two or three scenes had me actually say, "Oh (expletive) no!" because of how almost cinema-like the scare reveal felt. In many cases, the scares here feel more like you're watching a film than reading a book with how they're set-up, and that's not a complaint. They're effective, that's for sure.

But the story gets absolutely bogged down by repetitive scenes and by the conceit of having the parents using Bela as a sounding board for their various issues, which typically results in the parents rambling on with extremely long monologues that were very tedious to read and in only one case worked out due to a reason I won't spoil.

One notably disappointing element was the ending. The story was building... absolutely building... to something. It got emotional, it got frustrating, it got heavy and dreadful. But then it delivered nothing in particular. Too quick, vague, and unsatisfying to be effective. It almost felt like the ending to a disconnected story, not the one I'd been reading. Apparently there are some interviews with the author that make things more clear, but a reader shouldn't need to seek out supplementary material to make a book work.

There are the bones of a fantastic horror novel in here, and I don't regret reading it for the few scare scenes that had me actually shocked which rarely happens when reading a book. But it has too many issues to be something I'll want to read again.

Experiencing the horrors from the perspective of a young child is so unique that I could not put this book down. Being afraid of something in your closet is such a universal experience, it is so easy to relate to Bela and feel protective of her. The writing in this books makes you want to keep reading, I had such a hard time putting this down because I so desperately wanted Bela to be safe. Even though we are following the POV of an 8 year old I still totally grasped what was happening in the adults lives around Bela, Josh Malerman was so easily able to give you just enough that you as the reader understood and almost felt bad for Bela that she was so naive to it. There were a handful of things I did not personally love in this book, the ending did not pack the same punch as the rest of the book did for me. I also DESPISED Bela's mom, I think that was the intent but I just had a hard time rooting for her to make it out. There were times I wish we got a better description of what Other Mommy looked like, there were times I didn't feel as scared because I could not envision her in my head. I also would have loved just one POV from one of the adults in Bela's life, sometimes it did get a little tiring being only in the head of an 8 year old.
Overall, this was a fun book and I think if you are a fan of Josh Malerman you will enjoy this!

The Dread!
You know those types of reads that give you goosebumps and unsettles you but you do not want to put it down? This one is like that.
The story is told from the POV of 8 y/o Bela, reading these increasingly alarming incidents following The Other Mommy from her perspective it’s for me what gives this book such a creepy feeling and makes it a perfect nightmare. It’s a must read that I know will be a favorite 🖤

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫/5

Thank you so much to @randomhouse and @netgalley for the ARC. Opinion is my own 🖤

Dread inducing and deeply disturbing, this was a read that made me scared to get back to it. Very atmospheric with a profound prose, it is safe to say that the feeling of malaise lasted long after the book was over.

Incidents Around the House is told from the POV of 8 year old Bela. Bela lives at her house with Mommy and Daddo. She also has a friend who lives with her in her room.

Other Mommy lives in Bela's closet.

At first, Other Mommy would stay in Bela's closet. After a while, she would come out of her closet and sit on Bela's bed.

Other Mommy has a question for Bela. A very, very important question.

Can I go inside your heart?

Bela doesn't want to answer Other Mommy.

Other Mommy wants Bela to say yes. But Bela won't. She either doesn't answer, or she says no.

Now, Bela sees Other Mommy around the house. She sees Other Mommy while she's in the living room talking to Daddo. She sees Other Mommy looking at her through a hole in the ceiling. She sees Other Mommy at Mommy and Daddo's party while she's dancing downstairs. That's when she realizes that other people can see Other Mommy, too.

Other Mommy wants an answer. And Other Mommy is going to do anything to get the answer she wants, no matter where Bela tries to hide.

This book TERRIFIED me. I typically read at night after my kids go to bed, and I there were several times that I had to put my kindle down before I planned to because I got too creeped out. It doesn't help that my youngest is going through an imaginary friend phase right now, but thankfully she hasn't mentioned an Other Mommy (and hopefully she never will, or I may just lose my mind).

Malerman brilliantly sets the scene. You can sense the urgency, the fear, the dread, the confusion, the panic. The way Other Mommy changes throughout the entire book is a horrifying thought, and it's incredibly well done. You never know what to expect with her, where she'll pop up. One particular scene made me shriek out loud to the point where my husband asked me if I was ok. I described what happened, and he responded with a horrified "Eeehhhh".

I'll be seeing Other Mommy in my nightmares (and hopefully not in my actual house). I feel like she'll be just in the corner of my eye for the next few months. I really hope this eventually becomes adapted into a movie. I'd love to see Other Mommy on the big screen, and I bet she would absolutely terrify audiences.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for a copy of the ARC for my honest opinion!

This book was definitely creepy! The POV is a child, so that was different the story comes out in spurts like a child’s thoughts. I really can’t decide if I liked it or not. But, it was unique. I did enjoy the creep factor and it definitely felt like watching a scary movie. If you like books about haunting and can handle the young POV I think you’ll like this one! I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I didn’t dislike it but I also didn’t love it either! But I am glad I read it!

Thank you @netgalley and @Delreybooks for letting me read this one early!

8-year-old Bela is the narrator of this tale of the supernatural. She lives with her mother and father but there is another entity in the family: Bela has a friend living in her closet who tells her to call her…”Other Mommy.”

As usual I went in not knowing anything so I was delighted to find out that this novel had some of my all-time favorite horror tropes.

I devoured this book up to the 50% mark where it jumped the shark. Up to that point, the only thing I didn’t always enjoy was Bela’s voice at times. But since the story scared the living daylights out of me I could overlook that. Unfortunately, when the adults’ behavior became nonsensical and the plot became extremely repetitive, it stopped working for me. For horror to work, there has to be some semblance of realism, otherwise I am taken out of the plot completely. The story needed to be shortened in some areas and expanded in others. I would love to give examples but they would be spoilers.

This could have been so great if the adults had acted like real people.
2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman was a tale that woke me in the night to make sure my closet door was closed! In true Malerman fashion, the ending will leave you questioning, “What did I just read?!” This book was more than horror, as Malerman is what I would describe as a horror+ writer. There is always an element to be discussed beyond the scope of a good scare. Family secrets and what it means to be a “good parent” are at the heart of this one.

This one was creeeepy af, and reading it alone, at night, in my hotel room was a terrible idea. Let’s just say that I checked to make sure every door was latched tight multiple times.

Told from the perspective of a child, Bela, this was very different from most of my reads. What I liked most about this format was getting advice from the adults as though I was new to the world. A lot of the deeper conversations were so well done, and I feel like I would be a better-adjusted human if my parents had spoken to me like mommy and daddo in this book.

I think what I found so terrifying about this book was that despite the denial and disbelief from the adults in Bela’s life, Malerman was able to SHOW the reader what was going on in such a vivid manner. This one was definitely scary and I will be thinking about this one, in the dark, for a long time.

Check this one out if you like horror, haunted houses, creepy kids, and big conversations!

Quotes I loved:

💭 “Maybe we saw the bottom in each other and we didn’t want to be found at the bottom alone.”

💭 “And so you might think something bad is going on at home, but no. It’s going on in you.”

**Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey Books for the eARC of this spooky title!**

Easy 5 stars. This book was amazing. I haven’t been scared from a book in a long time. Thank you for providing this ARC for me to read. It’ll be sitting with me for days, and is well worth a re-read.

Wow! This made me feel like I felt when I was a teenager and read The Amityville Horror. Really scary - edge of your seat - I read it in 2 days. Would have read it in one sitting if I didn’t have responsibilities!

This one was weird to say the least but I definitely wouldn’t classify it as a horror novel. Maybe suspense? I flew through it in a day because the writing is so easy to follow since our narrator is a young girl of maybe 6? It was a solid 4⭐️ read until the ending which made me knock it down a star. It just left me with SO many questions!

I went into this book completely blind which you should do if you have a tendency to predict what is going to happen in a book easily. There were a lot of twists and turns and then this massive build up towards the ending and then it just stopped. I don’t know how to describe it. Maybe it was done on purpose because I could see myself puzzling over this ending for a long time and talking with other readers about it for months.

Overall it was a good book. Read more like a campfire scary story than a horror book but I consider it a palette cleanser in a way. I think readers with enjoy it due to its easy language and good story flow but if you are a die hard horror reader this is not for you.

A quick one sentence synopsis: A girl and her family haunted by an entity called Other Mommy have to figure out how to get rid of it before it’s too late.

This could be a great entrance into the horror genre book. It isn’t too scary, it reads easily, and can show people what horror is about without making you completely scared. I’ll probably read it again by the pool over the summer so if that says anything about the book then you should probably check it out.

What an interesting concept! Incidents Around the House was written from a child’s POV which really added to the creepiness of the book. It’s not your typical haunted house story and that made it so much more unsettling. I felt the hopelessness of the characters as they tried everything they could think of to get rid of “Other Mommy” and was distressed by the outcomes of their efforts!