Vera's dying mother has called her home to the house her father built, the house where her father tortured his victims in the basement under Vera's bedroom. And, like a good daughter, Vera goes to help her. But her mother refuses any help with her personal care, insisting that she's made arrangements for that. Vera's job is to sort through closets and cupboards, digging through what was left after the murder investigations. Her mother has rented rooms to a series of artists and writers who have pillaged the place for inspiration and bits and pieces to add to their work. There's one still living in an outbuilding. While Vera's mom will barely speak to her, this guy wants to pry for details. This book is a slow burn that takes some incredibly creepy turns. I don't know what I was expecting, but that ending definitely wasn't it!

My attention was caught by Sarah Gailey when I read The Echo Wife. I enjoyed that one a good deal, but it did not prepare me for how much I was going to get sucked in by Just Like Home! Their writing is an absolute force. The book was genre bending and intriguing and I loved falling down the rabbit hole that was this novel. The story packed a punch, and while some of the subject matter could make this a little touchy for some readers, I found it to be interesting and creepy and exciting.

Just Like Home: Sarah Gailey Exorcises Our Grisly Obsession with True Crime

At this point, you know when you’re being told a Sarah Gailey story. There will be familial relationships fractured along fault lines, often involving one member shut out of another’s world (Magic for Liars). A house often figures prominently, either a childhood home or one that never got the chance to house a family but has instead been filled with blood and trauma (“Haunted”). And even before the blood, there is the equally impactful trauma of adolescence shaped by an unyielding and unforgiving parent so determined to remake the child in their image that they don’t care if doing so breaks them (The Echo Wife).

Over the past several years, it’s been fascinating to watch Gailey refine the blueprint for a domestic thriller with a supernatural twist, culminating in their latest horror novel that gets beneath your skin before you even realize how deep it’s gone. Examining a serial killer’s legacy through his widowed wife, estranged daughter, and abandoned house, Just Like Home interrogates the bloodlust of the true crime genre alongside a good old-fashioned haunting.

Killings send Vera Crowder away from Crowder House when she’s barely out of adolescence—specifically, her father Francis Crowder’s salacious murders that took place beneath the floorboards where she and her suburban-with-a-sharp-edge mother Daphne slept. Death brings Vera back in adulthood, but it’s Daphne who is wasting away before her eyes; her final request is that Vera pack up the house and take care of things once she’s gone like a good daughter. Never mind that Vera has never considered herself a good daughter, nor a good person.

Crowder House is not the home that Vera left when she was a teenager: In the intervening twelve years, Daphne has cashed in on their unfortunate infamy by opening up the doors to all manner of strangers who feel entitled to witness Francis’ crimes, and to the writers and artists who would scavenge upon whatever creative morsels are left. Crowder House has become part museum and part artists’ residency, so trod upon and carved out as to be almost unrecognizable.

Almost. As Vera settles in for her grim duty as only daughter, she discovers that her childhood fears of something scraping and scratching beneath the bed are alive and well. And now that she knows how awful other people can be, she may be more open to investigating whether there is actually a monster in her room, or whether Vera is filled with the same greasy, choking darkness that’s in her bloodline…and if her superstitious habit of snapping four times won’t succeed in driving that darkness away.

Other writers would stay in their lane between true crime or haunted house story, but Gailey grabs both plots by the throat and binds them together in an unsettling, deliberately related tale. From the first, thorough tour through Crowder House, they establish the repetitive, almost sing-song language of the house that her father built, in all its literal and figurative applications; even though Francis exists only in Vera’s memories, he’s never not present.

Such a claustrophobic setting is extremely effective in making sure the reader never forgets who exactly orbits throughout Crowder House. There’s the awful mundanity of Daphne’s hospital bed taking up the dining room (a detail that will reveal its layered brilliance as the mystery unfolds), and a different sort of haunting in the form of James Duvall, the self-obsessed sculptor who has taken over Francis’ beloved shed as his artistic Airbnb, yet walks through Crowder House as if he owns it. The son of the true crime writer who immortalized a particular version of the Crowder family history, James has wormed his way into Daphne’s final weeks and seeks to do the same with Vera—a greasy parasite who feeds on the lurid facts of the lives lost in that basement.

Yet Gailey resists the temptation to give up too many juicy specifics about Francis’ killings—to the point that, were this a true crime podcast, you’d be leaving two-star reviews demanding more, more, more. But that’s the point: Even that knee-jerk reaction reveals how entitled we readers (and listeners) have become to the gory particulars of the worst day of someone else’s life. At our basest impulses, the way we consume this form of entertainment is not unlike James believing that he, a secondhand source at best, has more of a personal claim to, say, Vera’s father’s unearthed letters than she does.

(But that doesn’t mean that Gailey shies away on very purposely chosen visuals, either. Like the holes. Shudder.)
For what Gailey holds back in grisly murder details, they pull no punches in erecting the true crime framework around Francis’ legacy. Daphne’s decision to open up the house to fans is rendered in straightforward yet disturbing reminders like the layer of plexiglass laid over everything from the family photos on the refrigerator to the paths leading up- and downstairs, to his bedroom and to his basement. Granting outsiders the opportunity to literally walk in Francis’ footsteps both preserves and feeds upon his darkness.

Here’s what’s most incredible: the Francis of Vera’s flashbacks sounds like an absolute sweetheart. Not in the “but Ted Bundy seemed so charming” way, but like an attentive husband (even if he rarely got it right with his grim, tense wife) and a doting father. From what child Vera glimpses and overhears, Francis is more concerned with life than with death; all of his actions are for the sake of letting in light, not succumbing to darkness. This is the cleverest element of Just Like Home: It seems clear, beyond even Vera’s bias, that Francis was, at least where she was concerned, a good man.

But that doesn’t change what he did. And just because Daphne is nearing the end of her natural life doesn’t mean that she gets exonerated for how she condoned Francis and punished Vera. Gailey weighs these uncomfortable truths side by side, and the scales never quite balance as Vera catalogs what’s left of her childhood home and exhumes new mysteries: Is the house actually haunted, or is this Vera’s childhood imagination and traumas resurfacing in an old familiar space? Did Francis intentionally nudge her toward unearthing his work, or was he trying to keep an eye on the same tendencies he recognized in his daughter? How much did Daphne know, and what is she still keeping from Vera?

The repetitive language can at times feel as if it’s obscuring the actual plot revelations, with the effect of a seasoned reader of the subgenre able to guess at some conclusions before Vera reaches them. But that doesn’t mean there’s some neat explanation for everything going on within the walls of Crowder House—on the contrary, there are multiple overlapping issues that raise more questions than they answer by the time you close the book. Trained as we are to crave the clear narrative arc of a true crime tale (even an unsolved one), it’s a refreshingly messy resolution.

4 Stars. I ended up enjoying this more than I thought and closer to my original expectations. This is a story about a young woman whose mother is dying so she goes back home to say goodbye and to help get the house up for sale. It just so happens that the house is the house of a famous serial killer… her father. This is a dark psychological drama /horror book and because you are in the house of a serial killer, you never know what could be hiding around the next corner.

When I first heard about this book I was really excited. I have this odd book thing with Sarah Gailey books. All of her books look so good to me, which isn’t the odd thing. I love how she writes YA and adult, sci-fi, magic, LGBTQ+, witches, and westerns, she just writes the kind of books I want to read. If you looked on my Kindle you would see Upright Women Wanted, When We Were Magic, and The Echo Wife, all sitting there. How many have I read? Well here’s the odd thing... none but I keep buying her books anyway. I think we all know how our TBR’s grow and sometimes I feel the only books I have time to read are books related to promised reviews. When I saw Gailey had a new horror book out, and Tor was kind enough to let me review it, I thought finally, finally I would be reading a Gailey book for sure. But what did I do when I had it in hand, I kept putting off reading it because of some reviews that while mostly liked the book, though it was slow or that not a lot actually happened. I had such high expectations that I could feel myself getting pretty disappointed. Anyway, I finally read it and realized those reviews in a way were right. This was what I would call a slow moving suspense book. But it was slow moving in a way that still kept me on my toes. I never knew when something would happen so I could never put the book down. And yes, not a lot always happened, but when things did happen, it made them seem really impactful. There was a reason I chose to read this book until 6am yesterday morning because I knew I would get no sleep just wondering what the ending would be anyway. It was not the book I originally expected, but I ended up enjoying it as much as I had hoped to anyway.

I do want to mention that this book is tagged LGBTQ+ because the main character is queer and mentions this to a douchebro character who seems to think his dick can cure her queerness anyway. That is it. This is not a coming out story, or romance, this as a horror/serial killer story.

To be very clear here I will not spoil anything so don’t worry. You might have heard people talk about the ending. I ended up really enjoying it and I’m not surprised that it's something on a lot of people’s minds. While I did guess correctly and see parts of it coming, I’m happy to say that some part of it was a totally surprise. There are parts of the ending you might figure out absolutely, but some of it is almost impossible and I really liked that about it. Let’s just say that wherever Gailey gets some of her ideas, I want a ticket to go visit that place:)

If you are interested in a dark psychological drama, with slow moving suspense and a shot of horror, than give this book a chance. This book is very different and it won’t be for everyone but it really showcased Gailey’s skills and I really enjoyed that ending. I could not be more excited that I took a chance on buying so many of her other books and I can’t wait to read them.

A copy was given to me for an honest review.

I was pretty intrigued by this novel. It’s been a long time since I’ve read horror novels and I missed it.

Vera left her parents’ house a long time ago. Her mother hates her anyway. Yet, as she is about to die, she asks Vera to come home to put everything in order. It’s not easy for our heroine, especially after everything that has happened, but she does it. Facing her mother is the hardest part, but she has no choice. However, this house hides many secrets and Vera will soon realize it. Especially since a guest is determined to take control of this place.

We discover little by little the past of Vera, what happened with her father and with her mother. I must say that I did not expect this. It was an original novel, about a house that holds many secrets, like our heroine’s past. A very intriguing story!

let’s first take a moment to praise the cover of this book - eerie and beautiful. Now for the plot:: I came into this book expecting much more from the mother-daughter relationship. I never expected the creepy sci-fi horror relationship between her mother, father, and this dang house.
Once you knew the father had been up to something, you knew exactly what her was doing in the basement. BUT you never expected exactly what or why he was doing it.

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

Oof, this book is deliciously creepy. I think what I love most about Gailey as a writer—and I love MUCH about them—is their effortless genre flexibility: they have this unparalleled ability to not only dig into the heart of what makes a particular genre, or subgenre resonate but to draw something new and fresh (and in, in its own way, inescapably queer) from familiar bones.

Just Like Home, then, is a gothic flavoured, true crime inspired horror-thriller, which is also a very classic haunted house story. It had moments of reminding me of Sharp Objects and Mexican Gothic, while still being entirely its own thing. The basic premise here is that Vera Crowder after years of a somewhat rootless existence has been summoned back to the house where she grew up to attend her dying mother. The house in question was built for his family by Vera’s loving father, Francis Crowder. Who also happens to be a serial killer, whose crimes came to light when Vera was thirteen years old, and later died in prison.

And before you come at me for spoilers, that is literally in the blurb.

Although, given this is a Sarah Gailey book, it also barely scrapes the surface of what’s going on here, both literally and thematically. Which is hard to talk about in more detail without spoiling the story. I will, however, do my best.

At its heart, I guess, Just Like Home is a “who are the monsters really” type book and I am personally always here for a “who are the monsters really” type book, especially when it’s such a multi-layered exploration of the trope, encompassing familial relationships, romantic relationships, domestic abuse, serial killing, the entitled voyeurism engendered by the popularity of true crime, and—of course—a literal haunted house. The experience of reading the book itself is one of stifling and ever-increasing dread, coupled with an uncomfortable degree of curiosity about Vera, her father, and the past (which is woven into the narrative via present-tense flashbacks). That we are meant to interrogate our own curiosity is, I think, very much part of the point here (especially because, in the wake of Francis Crowder’s death his wife had turned the house into a kind of tourist attraction to his monstrosity) and I ultimately appreciated how willing the story is to deny that curiosity. It might sound like an odd thing to say about a book, one of whose central strands concerns a serial killer, but there’s a delicacy around what is revealed and how, the way the story retains a balance between intimacy and distance around its characters—particularly the prickly, damaged, desperately lonely Vera.

I was going to add that Just Like Home is not a book for the faint-hearted, before realising how pejorative faint-hearted sounds. As if preferring not to wade around in the tarry depths of human nature is somehow a moral failing. Basically, even compared to, say, The Echo Wife—which was also fairly horrifying, but in cool, cerebral kind of way—Just Like Home a dark and visceral read, both in the literal sense, and also in its emotional dynamic. It goes to some Places TM. I’m honestly still processing its heroine, wondering at my capacity for sympathy here, because holy God.

I also think—and this is complicated—there may be people for whom the concept of a serial killer who is also a loving and dutiful father might be inherently distasteful. I’m genuinely not sure if a nuanced approach to serial killers is what the world needs right now (or indeed ever), although I should also note that, while Francis Crowder is allowed to be more than his reputation (and it is important to the themes of the book that he is), he is never glamorised. This isn’t a Netflix Thinks Ted Bundy is hot situation. Also—for whatever fucked up cultural reasons—it makes a mild difference, for me, that Crowder’s victims are all men. Not that I’m claiming it’s okay to serial kill men, but I genuinely believe we are too interested in general in serial killers who solely target women. I mean, that shit goes back to Jack the Ripper. On top of which the serial killing is, of course, feeing into the book’s broader explorations of home, domesticity, gender, and violence.

Ultimately, I recommend Just Like Home wholeheartedly but more carefully than The Echo Wife, simply because of the subject matter. Or perhaps I mean the presentation of the subject matter because one can definitely trace some connections between the two books: an unreliable, complicated protagonist, an intense domestic setting upon which something supernatural/SFnal acts as both reflection and disruption, the inescapability of power, gender and society. In a strange way, though, and this might say more about me and the means by which I’m willing to accept expressions of tenderness, Just Like Home felt a little less bleak than The Echo Wife. But the journey is darker, and bloodier, and its horror seems less detached (then again, Evelyn’s job in The Echo Wife is devastatingly unpleasant): so, you know, assess your own comfort before diving in.

As a kind of conclusion/sidebar, one of the on-going meta-jokes about haunted house stories is “why don’t they just leave?” There’s quite a famous Call of Cthulhu (the roleplaying game, I mean, not the story by racist Uncle Howie) scenario called The Haunting. I don’t remember the details super well, but my partner ran it for me and some friends once—and I think the basic deal is that you’re sent by someone (? An estate agent?) to investigate a house in Boston that is rumoured to be haunted, making it hard to rent/sell. There’s all kinds of shenanigans as you wander around including a bed that tries to throw you out of the window. I think, once you’ve been brutalised by the house, you can go and research it or something, and it turns out there’s a something-or-other in the basement that throws telepathic knives at you. Anyway, for maximum lulz I always roll my CoC characters randomly, and I’d ended up with someone incredibly rich and incredibly stupid, so I’d decided to play—in essence—Bertie Wooster, alongside which I’d put a lot of my points into hot air ballooning because I thought it would be funny. Needless to say, I spent the whole scenario watching my friends’ characters getting attacked by furniture and otherwise traumatised, going “why don’t we just leave? We could just leave? I’m very rich, we don’t need this job. I could have a hot air balloon here in thirty minutes. Say the word.”

Where I’m going with this daft anecdote is: above all else, Just Like Home is not only a fascinating take on the haunted house story, it presents a gloriously twisted and, to me, kind of appealing reason for its protagonist to stay.

Very solid modern haunted house book! Kept me guessing until the end, had some genuinely spooky bits, realistic characters - I just really enjoyed it very much.

I spent the majority of the time reading Just Like Home wondering “what the actual heck am I reading?!”

It was a fast paced page turner. Vera returns to her childhood home, the home where father built, because her mother called her on her death bed. The mother who turned her back on her.

The story is tore through two different time periods: young Vera and current Vera. Current Vera is clearly struggling with going home and has an extremely complicated relationship with her mother. Also, the house might be haunted. We learn through glimpses of young Vera what exactly happened to Vera’s father, and the root of her mothers complex relationship.

But then it got weird. I thought I had the ending called..: but then the “horror” part of the book kicked in - I think? It wasn’t so much horrifying/scary as weird. I had to turn back pages and re-read things to fully grasp what was happening - which was a lot. It was interesting… but I’m not really sure what even else to say about it.

This book is spooky, haunting, and dark dark dark! “Just Like Home” is a twisted story of the daughter of a serial killer - and Sarah Gailey mastered her craft!

What did I just read?! The daughter of Dexter mixed with supernatural scares? The plot was pretty out there, but that made it quite an unpredictable read. I found myself unsure of whether I was scared for Vera because the other characters could possibly want to hurt her or due to some type of haunting/paranormal activity. Whatever the reasoning, the creepy, spooky, and, at times suspenseful, elements were there.
On the other hand, there were some plot points that weren’t very well developed (Vera’s relationship with her mother as a young child, for one) yet the pace at the beginning of the book was a bit on the slow burn side.

After 12 years, Vera has returned to her hometown and family home to take care of her dying mother. The pair had been estranged for years, since her mother had capitalized on Vera’s fathers notoriety as serial killer, while Vera tried to keep quiet about it.

While Vera has moved back into her home, Crowder House, she finds her mother rented out the guest house to an “artist” who is taking apart pieces of the home for a special project.

What follows next is told from alternate timelines of Vera’s youth and the present. As the memories unfold, this novel will give you just the slightest chill down your spine.

I like to call this genre Horror-Lite. Not full or gore or lots of deaths. But horror that will creep into your brain and subconscious and that will remain there, where you’ll still think of certain passages long after you’ve finished.

Thanks to Netgalley and the editors for the ARC!

Crowder House is haunted. That is at least what everybody says, because it is the only explanation to what happened in the basement so many years ago.
Vera hasn’t been in Crowder House for a long time, but now her mother is dying and the past has finally caught up with her. And the grease is still there, somewhere, hiding in plain sight.
I will try to be brief, because I truly think Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey is one of those books that are better enjoyed if the reader just goes head first and gets entangled in its spider-web. It is a gothic story about a house haunted by both the living and the dead; a slow-burn that jumps from one unsettling scene to another; a narration frozen in two moments of time, Vera as a child trying to know her father and Vera as an adult trying to pick up the pieces of what is left of her mother. It is a story of grief, and as such it can become heavy sometimes. I myself had to put the book down and continue the next day, as I needed to get out of Crowder House and breath some air.
It might also become too slow for those readers eager to gut the mystery and pull at it until it shows in its perfect, greasy, figure.
The author once said that this novel was for anyone who has ever loved a monster. I will add that it is for those who are looking for a creepy place to stay, at least for a while, even if the world keeps demanding our grief and the monsters could not be the ones we should be afraid of.

I received this book from NetGalley as an eARC in exchange for a review.

The best way I can describe this book is unsettling as hell. Just Like Home is the perfect haunted house read for the quickly approaching spooky months.

We follow our main character Vera Crowder as both a child and as an adult. As a child she explores the mysteries for her house and what her father is doing. As an adult she is helping her mother pass on and preparing the house for sale and in the process uncovering it’s further mysteries.

This book has some great twists that I didn’t entirely see coming. The way Gailey sets the scenes are so good and spooky I almost wanted to put the book down and just be done because they were so unsettling and uncomfortable but I had to know what was going on so I kept going.

I will definitely be recommending this read for the spooky months ahead.

This was a good, creepy, gothic story. But, I did have to put it down halfway through because it was just a slow go for me. I was able to pick it back up after several reads in between and finish it. The ending fell flat for me, I wasn't really gripped from it. I must say the thing that kept me intrigued the entire time was the atmosphere and writing style though. That was fantastic! But the characters and ending had no real pull for me. There were a few parts that left me surprised and kept me anxious. I just felt there was something missing, but I can definitely see others loving this one.

Couldn’t finish this one it was so slow and all over the place. I really didn’t like the main character and hated all the mystery of why she was so angry. A cool idea but just really really all over the place. Very bummed I had high hopes for this

Review of Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

⭐️⭐️💫

I really enjoyed the Echo Wife and was really looking forward to this one. The synopsis sounded great but unfortunately it didn’t work for me overall. I read a review a week or two ago where a smart bookstagramer compared it to Mexican Gothic and I totally agree. What I liked about this book (and why I finished snd it is a 2.5 stars rather than 1-2) was the excellent writing and absolutely skin crawling creepy vibe the entire book. But the story was disjointed and I didn’t like the characters and the overall ending was just odd and didn’t love it. There was one part of the ending I thought was cool! I will definitely read more from her in the future though.

Quick synopsis: Vera has been bouncing from place to place since her traumatic childhood. Her father was a serial killer who buried bodies at their home. He is now deceased and her mom is currently dying. Her mom had asked her to return home and she does. The memories flood back and she begins finding creepy notes left for her in her dad’s handwriting.

Gailey says this one is for anyone who has ever loved a monster. Vera returns home at the behest of her dying mother. Vera’s father was a serial killer, and she loved him. Vera returns home to face her troubled past, her estranged mother, and the artist who is living in their guest house, combing through Vera’s childhood in the name of “art.” When Vera starts finding strange notes around the house and her things, the artist insists he didn’t leave them, but who else could it be? Her mother is dying and Vera isn’t writing them herself. Is there something else lurking in the house, in their past? Something sinister?

I flew through this book. I’m not normally one for serial killers/true crime stuff, but in addition to digging a little into the murders of Vera’s father, it’s about the legacy something like that leaves on a child, how it affects the grown woman, particularly when the killer was beloved. There’s mystery with the house guest, a study in a troubled mother-daughter relationship, and perhaps even a little paranormal happenings lurking in the shadows. Everything I need for the perfect, creepy story. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it made me look forward to fall even more. I love creepy all year, and it always makes me long for crisp cool evenings, falling leaves, and of course, Halloween.

The book is out now wherever you get your books and audiobooks.

You know when you’re watching a scary movie and there’s a moment where you have to hide your eyes to keep watching? That’s how I felt reading this book. It made me anxious and kept me guessing, and then with about a quarter of the book left, I literally read it peaking between my fingers. And then with about 10% left, all I could think was: what the fuck is going on?

This book really sucks you in from the start. Vera returns to her childhood home because her mother is dying and she has to begin preparing to sell the house. As it turns out, Vera’s sweet and loving father, who has already passed years before her return, had a dark secret. The reader is left trying to piece it all together with flashbacks from Vera’s childhood and the present. That aspect of this book is my favorite. It’s thrilling and scary and while at times a little predictable yet still somehow not.

A kind of major spoiler that after finishing it I cannot get out of my head is that this book reminds me a lot of a darker (and kind of sweet?) version of the movie Monster House. It’s a bizarre ending to an overall scary book that you would think is just another poltergeist/ghost story. Ultimately, I was left feeling even sadder for Vera because all she ever wanted was a friend. It wasn’t her fault that her father was a serial killer and that her mother was jealous and mean, and we’re left not knowing what happens to Vera in the end.

I loved this book, and will now be checking under my bed every time I go to sleep thank you very much.

Is it me or does Sarah Gailey reinvent themselves in all the best ways every! single! time! they write a new book?!?!

This time we're treated to a horror-house story with Just Like Home, when Vera Crowder is called back to her childhood home to watch over her estranged mother as she lay dying. We immediately sense that there is some horrible family secret we're not yet clued into, and that the itself house holds some exhilarating, and terrifying, secrets of its very own.

As Gailey slowly wraps us in their tantalizing web, peeling back the familial trauma and gory ongoings in the basement through flashback chapters, we begin to understand that Vera and her mother are not alone in the Crowder House...

Honestly, I'm surprised to see it shelved in the regular fiction section at the bookstores because of the suspense and horror components it contains. An absolute page turner if for nothing other than the SHEER NEED TO KNOW just wtf is going on! And holy crap does it get CRAAAAZY in the last 3/4s of the book!