Vera is the grown daughter of a serial killer who is quite estranged from her mother. Going home to help her mother as her mother is dying is a huge thing for her to do, and we clearly see she did not have a very good relationship with her.

She starts hearing voices calling her name and finds notes she believes are from her father, but can't be sure (there is a house guest who is a spiritual medium?), and wonders if her father's ghost is trying to contact her. This is a little different--might appeal to fans of Riley Sager's latest. I struggled with it a bit to be honest. I loved her last book, and this one felt so different from that. Still a solid read.

Just Like Home is a slow-burning psychological thriller about a haunted house that is sure to keep readers guessing. When Vera returns to her childhood home to take care of her estranged mother, it's hard to be back where her father buried the bodies of his victims. To make matters worse, an artist has moved into the guest house and is stripping Vera's childhood for "art." Someone is leaving notes in her father's handwriting around the house. The story has a dual-timeline. Highly recommended!

Just Like Home is an eerie slow burn that descends into horror. While it took me a bit to be drawn into the story, by the end I was absolutely enraptured. Vera is a fascinating character with a dark past, and her return to a house where unspeakable horrors occurred is a visceral one for the reader. I found the ending to be absolutely perfect. This book is made for someone like me, who sees a house as a body and the life within it as a force that animates it. Obsessed!

“She was a Crowded. She’s finally gotten a taste of the thing that lived under the bed, and she wouldn’t rest until she’d gotten her fill.”

I really wasn’t sure where this book was going in the beginning, in the middle I thought I had things figured out but everything took a turn and almost all that I knew went out the window. This house belongs to the Crowders, it was built by Vera’s father. But Vera wants to get rid of it once here mother dies, will the house allow it though?

Just Like Home is a book that keeps you guessing. The entire time I was asking questions and guessing what was going to happen, for better and for worse. After finishing this book I didn’t fall head over heels in love with it but I didn’t hate it either.

The story by Sarah Gailey is well crafted but the biggest issue I have is our main character Vera. Unlike the characters in something like Hill House, Vera seems like a blank slate with very little emotion and I never connected with her. I feel that the strongest part of her character was the flashbacks to her experience with her father and the present storyline list the charm that the past scenes had.

The reaction to the book hinges on the twist and I didn’t connect with it because it honestly changes the genre and ruined the story for me because of the sudden gear shift.

Overall Just Like Home is a solid 3/5 story that won’t haunt your dreams long after you finish it.

What to say about Sarah Gailey’s work….what to say, indeed. They’re a master of mystery and absolutely foul, and I’m completely, totally, head-over-heels OBSESSED. I anticipated a demented little ghost story about a murder house, possibly bloody and ooky given the dripping graphics on the cover, but honestly? It’s so much more than words can really describe, and I’m at a loss to find a way to enthuse about it that won’t peel away the many layers of its story like the peeling wallpaper and crumbling plaster. It’s something to be savored, but you will find it to irresistible to do so. I love the descriptions, oozing out of the page and creating a heavy, dense atmosphere of sadness and dread. I love how they’ve mastered the art of crafting characters with such empathetic and nuanced flaws; you can’t hate Gailey’s MCs even if you try, even if they’re showing you a million selfish reasons why. It’s just…hypnotic. I got so engrossed in this book i read it in mere hours. Usually I like to savor my books, but this one I read in every spare moment I could muster, for as long as I could. I could put down my tablet and still be thinking of it, much like our Vera, I couldn’t escape Crowder House. It was inside me, within my soul, under my skin… And I don’t think it’ll ever leave. It’s a wondrous thing, this book; it’s despicable and gruesome and depressing, but it’s oddly comforting, leans on your empathy drive, seeps into your heart, and you just cozy on up. Weird to say, but reading it feels Just Like Home.

First off, I love Sarah Gailey and most recently read her American Hippo novellas so I went into this new novel with interesting expectations....however, I did not expect the weird moments of body horror within this book. Quite frankly it made me really uncomfortable which is likely a great sign of a well written horror book. Yet still slightly awful for me when it comes to a book/audiobook. I really struggled to decide on a rating...I loved the premise and got most established within the dual timelines as the book went on but it is hard to find the main character likeable when she never admonishes the actions of her (serial killer) father and does not take full responsibility for her own actions against the people she cared about. Don't get me wrong, I do love an unlikeable/unreliable narrator who is morally grey buuuuut this REALLY toed the line for me. At the end of the day it is definitely a four star read and I continue to love Gailey's writing style but I when I think about this book I cannot get over how uncomfortable and creepy this was. If that is your jam then you may truly enjoy this book!!

Thank you NetGalley, Tor Books, and Sarah Gailey for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! I can definitely feel the “Haunting of Hill House” vibes with this one and I loved the beginning of it. It was dark, atmospheric, and left enough mystery for me to be interested in it. However, as it went on, I became more disconnected from the story and by the end it really wasn’t my thing. I wasn’t a fan of the ending, but I know a lot of people are, so it could just be my preference! I think this is one of those that people should try out just to see if they like it.

Vera is the grown-up daughter of a serial killer, but when she returns home to help her dying mother clean up her childhood home, old memories resurface. She begins to hear a voice calling her name and starts finding notes in her father’s handwriting. She can't tell if these messages are from her mother’s other house guest (who is a spiritual medium artist) or if her father's ghost is truly trying to communicate with her.

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey is a psychological thriller meets non-conventional haunted house story that wonderfully captures our complicated relationship with family.

Ironically, it was Vera’s serial killer father who was kinder closer to her while her mother was jealous of the bond they had. Their relationship becomes even more strained when they’re stuck living together again with years of pent of resentment between the two of them.

However, it was the artist character that detracted from the story for me. I almost wish he had been removed entirely or given a less prominent role so the story could focus more on Vera reliving and confronting her past because that’s where the story shined most for me.

This book is extremely dark, creepy, and absorbing. No spoilers here because it's in the blurb for the book: Vera Crowder returns to her family home to her estranged, dying mother. The home is also where her father killed and buried multiple victims.

Her mother, Daphne Crowder has preserved the house as it was when Francis Crowder's crimes were discovered - selling tours and offering artist residencies as a way to make money. Upon her return, Vera discovers that the latest artist, James Duvall has been renting the backyard shed in order to "collaborate" with the house to create his installation art. He has also insinuated himself into the house, stealing from Vera's memories and the crumbling house. Vera is tasked with clearing out the house and as she reunites with the house she rediscovers the "something lurking under the bed" nightmares of her childhood. These nightmares are more complicated than the usual childhood fears as Vera contends with the bumps, rot, and secrets that lurk beneath, within, and around her in this house that "knew how to stay quiet."

The book shifts between the present and past revealing memories from Vera's childhood - ratcheting up the tension as glimpses from her past begin to reveal the true nature of the crimes that took place in the house. The sense of dread and foreboding is strong throughout the book, and like the tourists who visit the house I was intrigued to find out WTF happened there?! I don't think of myself as a horror reader, not a fan of bumps in the night, but what this book deftly does is create a multi-layered realistic horror house with unhappy marriages, domestic and emotional abuse. Some of the scariest moments in this book are the emotional carnage that takes place between spouses, between mother and daughter, between father and daughter.

There are also moments of sadness, pain and desperate longing for love. In the midst of the dread and anxiety the book would shock me not with terror but with tender moments as Vera describes that she is looking for "evidence that once, half a lifetime ago, love had lived here too." And my heart would break for Vera. This messy, very complicated, and unreliable protagonist.

Sarah Gailey's writing continues to impress, disturb, and captivate. I was drawn into the suffocating atmosphere of the house and the slowly building terror that exists there.

Let me start by saying I'm definitely in the minority of reviewers with this one. I've also learned after reading this that I am not a horror fan and I need to stop trying to convince myself that I could be. I really liked the Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey so I decided to give this a try and see if I could get into horror. Nope. I can't. If you are a horror fan, however, you may really like this. I just found the ending to be so unrealistic and just downright ridiculous. A talking house? Seriously? That's how we're going to end this? She's going to kill people to protect the house? I just can't understand how this got so many good reviews because the ending just doesn't make any sense to me and it made me like the book even less.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced copy and exchange for an honest review. I wish I'd enjoyed it more, but I'm sure that others will enjoy it more than I did.

Sarah Gailey does it again. Just like in The Echo Wife, I am THOROUGHLY creeped out after Just Like Home, but I absolutely loved it. Gailey can tell a story that enthralls, spooks, and enraptures. I was cringing reading, but I also couldn't look away. I loved The Echo Wife so much, and this absolutely lived up to my expectations.

This book is definitely creepy. However, very slow. I was hoping for a bit more action in the beginning because it was not holding my attention. I’m a mood reader and this one just didn’t work for me at the time I was reading it.

The nitty-gritty: Gailey's latest is delightfully unsettling, with unexpected twists, dangerous characters and ominous secrets.

Just Like Home was much much weirder than I expected, but I’ve come to realize that Sarah Gailey’s books cannot be easily shoehorned into tidy genre boxes. This is a ghost story, a domestic thriller, a murder mystery, a coming of age story and a twisty psychological horror story all rolled into one. I spent most of the book trying to figure out WTF was going on, and when the answers were finally revealed, they were not at all what I was expecting. The characters are problematic and do upsetting things, and to be honest I didn’t really like any of them. But the story worked its way under my skin, and Gailey’s moody and oppressive setting was creepy and unsettling in all the best ways.

I’m going to keep this as spoiler free as possible (which isn’t easy to do!). Vera hasn’t been back to Crowder House in twelve years, but her mother Daphne is dying, and so she reluctantly agrees to come home and settle her mother’s affairs and prepare the family home for sale. But when she steps foot in the front door, Vera is assaulted by memories from the past. Vera’s mother is camped out in the dining room, subsisting on nothing but lemonade. An avant-garde artist named James Duvall lives in the backyard shed, paying Daphne for the chance to “absorb the essence of the house” to use in his work. And back in her childhood bedroom, Vera is having disturbing nightmares, and something seems to be in the room with her, stealing the covers off her bed at night and even moving the bed.

As Vera makes her way through the house, packing up her parents’ belongings, she comes across odd things from the past that remind her of the year when she was thirteen and the terrible events that sent her father to prison. As the days pass and Daphne continues to cling to life, Vera begins to wonder: is the house trying to get her to leave? Or does it want her to stay forever?

Sarah Gailey does a great job of keeping the reader on edge for the entire book, and this is one of the book’s best elements, the sense that things just aren’t quite right inside Crowder House. Gailey’s descriptions of the house suggest something alive, something that “groans” and “breathes.” Vera discovers strange gouges in the walls that look almost like wounds. Throughout the story she finds smudges of a grease-like substance on her skin, smudges that seem to appear out of nowhere. At night in her childhood room, she hears noises coming from under her bed, but when she looks, there’s nothing there.

Looming over Vera’s return to Crowder House are mysteries from her past. Gailey reveals those mysteries in bits and pieces, the truth dangling just out of reach until the reader is ready to snap. Why are all the surfaces in the house covered with plexiglass? Why did Daphne invite James Duvall to stay in the shed? What happened to Vera’s childhood best friend Brandon? And of course, what did Francis Crowder do and what was Vera’s part in it? We learn that a man named Hammett Duvall (James’ father) became famous after writing a true crime exposé about the horrible events that happened at Crowder House, but we aren’t told exactly what those events are until well into the story. Something bad went down in the basement—and as a child, Vera was forbidden to go down there—but Gailey lets their readers’ imaginations run wild before finally dropping a few shocking revelations. One of my favorite parts of the story involves, of all things, a peephole. And that’s all you’re getting from me! You’ll have to read the book to find out more.

The story is told in alternating timelines—the present, as Vera reacquaints herself with Crowder House, and the past, starting when Vera is eleven and the events leading up to her father’s arrest. I loved this format, which gives us a glimpse into Vera’s mindset and her relationship with her parents. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Francis was a loving and nurturing father, and that Vera adored him. We get to see slice-of-life moments between the two, like the day that Francis taught Vera how to fish, and I loved that these scenes didn’t fit my assumptions about the kind of man Francis should have been. 

A few things didn’t work for me, though. I didn’t really like the whole James Duvall storyline, for some reason. By the end of the book I finally understood why the author included him, but up to that point I was completely confused by his presence. He was a creepy and predatory, and I hated that Vera felt attracted to him. Also, the ending caught me off guard, and I honestly cannot decide whether I liked it or not. Gailey introduces a supernatural element that didn’t quite fit the rest of the story, and it was weird. Still, there is a lot to love about Just Like Home, especially if you’re the type of reader who doesn’t need the author to hand feed you the answers. Horror lovers who aren’t afraid to try something different will find themselves right at home.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

This is the first book by Sarah Gailey that I have disliked. I don't hate it. I just had a really hard time reading it. The characters were all horrible and the setting is bleak and repulsive. I know that is the point, I just had a difficult time finding something to hold on to that would serve the purpose of compelling me to keep reading. Ultimately I respect what the author was trying to do. There aren't nearly enough books with genuinely dark female lead characters. But, and I hate to say it because I respect the author, this one just didn't sit well with me.

I would give this a 3.5. I was a big fan of Sarah Gailey's last book, The Echo Wife, which was pretty polarizing. I was so excited to read this. For 85% of the book, I was with it. I am a FAN of Gailey's writing; it's masterful. The pacing was a little disjointed, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I really liked the chapters that focused on Vera as a young girl. I think the ending threw me. I am not a huge fan of the type of horror that the ending developed into, that the big reveal gave us. But I almost appreciate being able to enjoy 85% of the book, and just being a little let down by the ending. I do think a lot of people will like the ending, but it wasn't fully my jam.

Let me start with a couple positives here - this book was skin crawlingly creepy with some heavy reckoning and exploration of who, how, and why we love. It was a page turner after about 20% of the book.

But honestly … wtf did I just read. Without spoilers, I’ll say that the ending left everything to be desired. The author had a real chance here to play with dark forces and finding oneself and they were 90% missed. Honestly even the main themes were skirted around at the end for something that didn’t fit the character growth or reckoning with the central conflict.

If you’re a fan of horror and true crime, this could scratch the itch. The dedication is for anyone who has ever loved a monster and it did come full circle in a good way in that front.

Overall could make a good movie with a couple tweaks so I’ll be on the lookout but the book missed the mark for me.

✨ Vera moves back home to the locations of her father's serial kills.

💥Vera returns to start packing up her childhood home due to her mother's pending death. But her past begins to haunt her, quite literally. I thought this had a lot of promise and was very creepy. Fast paced, lots of mystery. The ending was not at all what I expected. Also it would have been good to see some minor characters return at the ending.

My face at the end: 🤪

🍪 I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to @Netgalley and Tor Books for allowing me to read this ahead of publication.

💯 For more details on the books we read, be sure to follow me on TikTok (@zaineylaney). I will give you a list of reasons to read! Or listen to our podcast, Elated Geek, wherever you subscribe.

This was extremely creepy! It was my first Sarah Gailey, and I'm very happy I took the leap. Haunted houses and familial trauma are a great formula alone, but Gailey threw in some twists to keep us on our toes. The oddity of it all may throw some off. Although I personally don't love the idea of protecting the house, I understand that sometimes we cling to the little good that bad people give us, especially when they have passed.

This was weaved together very creepily which is a expected given the themes of a haunted house and following the abused child of a serial killer.