This book was a challenging read for me because it left me without a feeling of real closure. It was definitely not your run-of-the-mill story... even for the genre. There were a lot of twists that I didn't really see coming, which is unusual for me to find in a book. Without giving spoilers, there is one character who was completely different from any other book I've read. I finished the book feeling more haunted by the unanswered questions or untold stories than I would have expected. It would have been nice to learn a little more about all of the characters and what they were doing prior to the beginning of the book because it was an interesting leap from the past to the present.

I’ve read two books this year now with supernatural elements / houses and it really doesn’t appeal to me. This isn’t really “horror” so if you’re looking for disturbing or even gruesome, this won’t be for you.

Just Like Home is creepy and enthralling. Vera goes back to her childhood home when her estranged, dying mother sends out an SOS. Their relationship was always strained but they haven’t spoken sense Vera’s father was convicted as a serial killer. The house holds memories of gruesome deaths and her tainted upbringing. As she sets out cleaning the house she uncovers pages from her fathers journal and the darker truth of the house he built. Vera is a complex character imbued with the delusions of her loving but murderous father and the jealous, debilitating criticism of her mother. Page after page of haunting details make for a quick and thrilling read. Loved it and will definitely check out other books by the author. Thanks to NetGalley for the read.

Flawless, the story flowed well, the characters were well developed, I felt captured by the story, Amazon work!

First I will never drink Lemonade again. So there is that. IYKYK. also, I read The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey and this one just BLEW it out of the water!

This book creeped me right out. I LOVED the “You know something is building up and until then the book will slowly freak you out with creepiness” vibe. Legit. I read a lot of horrors and this one just did me in.

I have already recommended it to my friends that like horror, thrillers and everything in between! The ending was pretty twisty too. Overall solid 4 stars!

Thank you NetGalley (opinion is my own!) thank you to the author and publishing house as well - chef's kiss! Loved!

GHOSTS! SERIAL KILLERS AND CREEPINESS
In this very very creepy story, Vera returns to Crowder House (her family home) when her mother calls. It's been years since they have spoken and Vera feels the pull of familial duty rather than a desire to help. At the start of the novel she has returned to her supposedly haunted house - the house of a known serial killer - her father.

To survive financially Vera's mother has rented rooms and created a tourist trap atmosphere for those interested in serial killers and ghosts. Vera must deal with the most recent "artist" who is a descendent of a family enemy. Between the vitriol of her mother, the sneakiness of the tourist and her own complicated feelings about returning, it's not surprise that Vera has begun to flash back to her life as a child in the house.

Slowly but surely, secrets are revealed to explain what really happened at the Crowder House and before long Vera is faced with making some very life changing decisions. If you like learning about serial killers, love haunted houses and complicated families, and enjoy a twisted story filled with flashback then this creepy masterpiece is for you! #JustLikeHome #Macmillan #TorForge #Tor #Netgalley #Netgalleyreads #SarahGailey

Listed as a mystery/thriller 'Just Like Home' by Sarah Gailey leans more to the horror/supernatural genre than originally anticipated. An intense read, I found myself thoroughly hooked after the first few chapters and couldn't put it down. Crowder house has a long history that Vera Crowder has tried to move past, but when her mother asks her to come home, she finds herself pulled back into the disturbing home of her serial-killer father.
Never quite able to escape her past, Vera's return will open past memories that she may not wish to rediscover.

Deliciously creepy, this novel will leave you with a chill running down your spine and the need to look under the bed before you go to sleep at night.

It was a bit predictable and slow. I will not be posting a review on my social channels to negatively affect promo for this title. There's an audience for this book, but I am not that audience.

I love creepy and I love mystery and I love not knowing where things are going. Unfortunately, this one fell under the mark on all of the above. The author just made me feel like she was trying too hard with the creepy factor and the repetitive “my father built this house” line. Yes, I got it. Over and over and over again. In the end I see where she was going with it but it all just felt stiff and forced and not entirely haunting.

Vera’s mother calls her home to tend to things after not speaking for years. The home her father, the serial killer, built. There is also an artist staying in the shed and trying to create art from the mystery of the Crowder House. Creepy things happen and you wonder is there a monster? Is the house alive? Is it the artist? Is it crazy town? The story goes back and forth from the present Vera to the childhood Vera.

It was just a little meh for my taste and felt a bit like a YA horror.

Thank you Macmillan-Tor/Forge and netgalley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

A dark gothic story along the veins of The Haunting of Hill House and I’ll be Gone in the Dark. This is a story about a home and a family littered with secrets... and years later Vera receives a call from her mother saying “Come home.” and Vera obeys. Their fraught relationship has been a life long thing and now she is back home... the home her father built... the home of a serial killer. Vera must now face the hatred of her mother, the memories of love from her father as well as the bodies he buried there beneath the house he built for them... and to top it off her mother has invited a stranger into their home. She has invited James Duvall, a parasitic artist who wants to strip away Vera’s childhood for spare parts and use the home’s history, her father’s life, for his own art. Yet there is also someone else, someone who is leaving notes around the house in Vera’s father’s handwriting and Duvall insists it’s not him. Vera begins to unearth all her childhood memories, all the feelings and complications that made her who she is, and most of all discovering not only a long lost friend, but finding that Crowder House is her home. This was a lush and beautifully dark gothic story about one girl’s complicated family relationship, the love between a father and daughter, and finding a home for yourself. Vera starts off distant, wanting to get away from her mother and her home, away from the memories and the past, but as she discover’s her father’s belongings, his letters, and she remembers everything, she slowly begins to come into herself again and it was just lovely to read. The book starts off a bit slow but absolutely picks up by the end. The ending was fantastic and I honestly hope this book gets a show or a movie because it would make a fantastic gothic show/movie!!

*Thanks Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

a dark gothic style creepy thriller book. it follows vera who has to come home to her lol daphne, and the book flashes back from the current time in a dual timeline and of the past. we get flashbacks of times she recalls spooky things she experienced in her home such as being scared of the “monster under the bed”, creaking noises, “slurps”. when she was young her hero to check the monsters was her dad, and flash to current times vera tells us that her dad is a serial killer. we don’t know much about vera’s mother, she is very disturbed. i received this arc from NG and this is my voluntary review.

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories — she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there, beneath the house he'd built for his family.

Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting… but who else could it possibly be?

There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.

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Honestly this book caught me at the wrong time because if I read it before Book Lovers, I think I would’ve enjoyed more. This book did have me gasping at moments and I truly was a little spooked. However, the supernatural element was hard for me to follow throughout the book- so it wasn’t my favorite.

3.5⭐️

Sarah Gailey can twist your mind. Though my first exposure was through The Echo Wife - an immeasurably good and disturbing turn at the intersection of horror and domestic - Just Like Home proves they're more than able to turn any familiar territory into something menacing.

It's funny, when you think about it, how much a house can really hold. The love, the pain, the memories. The secrets. Returning to a place we once knew like the backs of our own hands can sometimes prove to be a far ruder awakening than we ever anticipate. It happened for me - returning even just to the state I was raised in brings me so much anxiety it builds like sludge in my throat - and it happens to Just Like Home's Vera when she's called to return to care for her dying mother and settle the affairs of the house her father built.

Awash in the warmth of familiar surroundings and enveloped by the ice of her mother's cold words, Vera must face the violent scrutiny of her neighbors and the secrets long since buried as they slowly come to light. Through chapters that alternate between Vera in the present and Vera's childhood, we watch as she battles the tension between the love she feels for her father and the darkness she feels within herself. The things that happened in the basement of Crowder House, the animal sounds and smothering silence within its walls and beneath Vera's bed are the lifeblood of her memories, and facing them again proves equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.

Gailey's ability to make a simple phrase echo with equal parts threat and longing makes each of their works a uniquely enticing experience. Just Like Home is visceral in its prose, dripping with hunger and need that transcends years and experiences and the floorboards of old houses to craft something that sticks in your mind with an earthy stubbornness. The threat thrumming at the heart of Home is ever-present in a way that clings to the air around each of the characters but, true to form, nothing is quite what it seems and there are twists lingering among these pages that feel both painful and fresh, like an unexpected splinter digging into the viscera of your mind.

2022 seems to be turning into a time reaching back to the Gothic and bringing it into the light as something with a fresh coat of darkness and understated menace that makes the genre so alluring. Perhaps it should not be surprising - after three years of staying in our homes it's only natural they should become fodder for exploring our anxieties and desires, and no genre trends that ground better than Gothic. The walls and floors and crevices we have gotten to know so well are newly intimate, and, after all, what is intimate can also be menacing, can't it? And maybe the safest place you know has monsters of its own. Maybe our monsters can love us. Maybe they can make us feel whole.

The Gothic is also a complex ground to explore other darknesses we try to pretend don't exist so we might feel comfortable. It's no coincidence that the resurgence of the genre's tendrils includes a resurgence of women who have a kind of strength to them born from their acceptance and comfort with the fact that they do not have to be wholly good people to be worthy of life and meaning. Men are always allowed to show their power, but never their weakness. Women are expected to show weakness and smother the light of their power. Just Like Home is but one recent entry in the literary landscape that presents a kind of inversion of that standard and consequently creates a world where the monsters are both new and familiar all at once.

Eerie, visceral, and skin-crawling, Just Like Home is a modern Horror with strong Gothic roots. Author Sarah Gailey's vivid descriptions of the house and painting of Vera's turbulent inner world were well done, but I found the story to be too slow paced and so insular it became claustrophobic. I found myself confusing Vera and Daphne (I think because Vera sounds like an older woman's name and Daphne sounds younger) and struggling to really visualize or connect to either of them.

Creepy, suspenseful, unnerving and all the good chills you get from a thrilling ghost story. Definitely recommend and that twist, what a twist!

It's not often a book can keep me guessing. It's not often a book keeps me up at night because I'm weirded out. This book did both. With a healthy side dish of "Wait...what?" This is definitely going on my re-read annually shelf.

What did I just read? I don't really know how to describe it but I really liked it. It was disturbing and intriguing throughout the whole time and I couldn't wait to see where the story was headed. Now I need to go and read anything else written by this author because wow!

Wow! This book had me questioning everything as I was reading it! I audibly said “wtf” several times! I loved how the story was focused around how the people in our life shape us but still had that incredibly creepy and disturbed element. One of my favourite Sarah Gailey’s yet.

This was such a good thriller novel.
Things weren’t predictable, there are great twists and turns, and the writing style was captivating . The gothic horror elements were also fantastic, and there were super spooky scenes that gave me the shivers 😂 highly recommend this for horror/thriller lovers!

Thank you for the chance to read this book! I enjoyed the gothic horror elements and the horror in general, it had some really scary moments that actually sent shivers down my spine. This was my first time reading a book by this author but I definitely want to read more now.