101 Horror Books: Just Like Home Review – Let’s Talk Houses

Phew! Let me tell you, this novel was an entire journey. It takes place over a short period and more or less all in one location, but my emotions and brain went on quite the adventure. All from the comfort of my recliner. Just the way I like. (I’m older than most adventuring protagonists, but Gandalf best not show up because I will not be going on any dragon hunts.) Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey was nothing like I expected.

In Just Like Home, protagonist Vera returns to her childhood home to prepare it for her mother’s impending death. It’s been 12 years since she’s stepped foot in the home, or seen her mother. Her father, Francis Crowder, built Crowder House himself. And then spent years murdering in its basement before being caught and dying in prison. The home holds memories Vera isn’t ready to face and mother she no longer considers family. It seems the house may hold other secrets as well.

Just Like Home is a haunted house story unlike any haunted house story you’ve ever seen before. I spent nearly 80% of the novel unsure if this had any real supernatural elements. I’m still not entirely sure if I liked it or not. The mystery and personal relationships initially fascinated me. As we ventured further into Vera’s past, her relationship with her mother, Daphne, and her father, Francis, I felt conflicted. Character flaws are an important part of any compelling narrative, but Vera became so unlikable, I found it hard to root for her. In the last act, the need to get answers drew me back in. In the end, the book was interesting but isn’t likely to be one of my go to recommendations.

Step away if you don’t want spoilers. Plot breakdown ahead.

Just Like Home starts with Vera returning to her childhood home, Crowder House. She reminisces about growing up within its walls. Overwhelmed by the prospect of both her mother’s impending death and cleaning out the house. She notices some changes, likely the result of upgrades from renters her mother has to help make money. Before entering, Vera snaps her fingers four times, a kind of ritual she’s used since childhood to block out unpleasant things.

Inside, the house has been transformed. Covered with plexiglass and carefully staged. Daphne has turned it into a morbid tourist trap. People traipse through to see where the famous serial killer, Francis Crowder, killed and tortured his victims. Others rent out the shed in the back to write or create art. Nothing is more starkly different than Daphne herself. Vera notes that she had no idea how close to death she would already be. Vera prepares herself to assist with Daphne’s needs, but apparently Daphne has a mysterious system and needs no help.

Vera heads to her childhood bedroom. It remains much the same as it was when she left it. The squeaky metal bedframe is still in the room’s corner. She grabs her father’s old toolset to fix the loose screws. It’s at this moment that we realize she loves and misses her father. Rather than feeling a sense of anger at him for his behavior. Not completely insane, but a little unexpected. She spends a restless night seeing shadows in the corners and hearing the bed rattle as she lies still.

Next we flashback to Vera’s childhood. Prepare for a bunch of these. It’s almost a dual story line, and it gives us a lot of insight into Vera’s character. In this flashback, Vera is 11 and she can hear sounds coming from under the bed. She sees a black shadow on the floor. She hears a gurgle and a gasp and screams. Her father runs to her room to check on her and finds nothing under the bed. But Vera does notice that he is covered in dirt. Instantly suspicious in the middle of the night. The sounds continue, but she snaps her fingers and they stop.

Vera has a nightmare the next night. In it she is pulling, what I think are, her own organs out of her stomach. She wakes up but has sleep paralysis. She hears a voice say, ‘Don’t worry.’ This was a brilliant scene. I felt the crawl up my spine when a voice from nowhere spoke as she lie unable to move.

Vera gets started by clearing out the kitchen. She picks up some bins from town, where everyone seems to hate her. Odd since she was just a kid and her father was the murderer? Her mother sits adjacent to her in the dining room as she works and says…nothing. Creepy. But Vera finds her father’s old mug, and inside is a page of his journal that talks about how much he loves Vera. She’s touched.

Daphne, Vera, and James (Daphne’s current shed resident) have an awkward dinner. Vera didn’t realize that the food she found in the fridge was for James as Daphne only drinks lemonade. And James is the son of the man who wrote the novel that made Francis Crowder’s murders famous. A man who interviewed Vera extensively for his novel and whom she feels exploited her for his own gains. James isn’t an author, but a painter. He paints haunted places, though he says haunted is a loaded word that is 100% what he does.

Now Vera is 11 and officers have come to the home in search of a missing man who worked with her father. Her mother is unusually kind to her in front of the officers. Dudes that guy is not missing. He is dead. Sorry to be the bring the bad news. The officers interview Francis. When they leave, Daphne sends Vera to her room. Ah, mom knows all about his extracurriculars. They are shouting, so Vera uses her finger snaps trick to tune them out.

Vera works to clean out her parent’s bedroom. After a trip to her car, she sees Daphne is awake and offers to get her chapstick. This leads to a conversation about how Daphne loved her from the moment she was born. But also hated her. Daphne holds on to such resentment for the love Vera received from her father. Before they can discuss it further, she coughs and brings up some kind of sludge. Vera cleans her, but is immediately dismissed after. Part of me is leaning toward TB because that’s a good usual suspect but I’ve never heard of dark, oily, gelatinous sludge from that so…

Vera is 12. She’s playing with her best friend, Brandon. But today is a different day. While riding bikes, he asks if he can kiss her. Just to see what it is like. They do. When Vera doesn’t want to try it again, Brandon trips her, sending her flying onto the sidewalk and splitting her chin. He shouts rumors about her father having an affair. Daphne is surprisingly affectionate when helping Vera clean up, but warns that her father is NEVER to know of the incident. And this is when I wonder if he kills kids, too. Like Brandon was a jackass, but murder would really be a bridge too far.

Vera and Daphne sit together to go through lots of paperwork in anticipation of Daphne’s rapidly impending death. It transpires that Francies had been writing Vera letters all his years in prison. Daphne had chosen not to pass them along. Vera isn’t ready to open them, so she stores them in her dresser for the time being. While in the room, she continues to feel a presence from under the bed. The lights flicker and it seems the bed skirt moves.

Vera is now 12 and half and on a fishing trip with her father. A normal father daughter outing about to turn. See, Vera slips up and tells him about the incident with Brandon. Here we learn all about his motivation for murder. He claims men are full of grease that has to be removed so that they can be saved from corruption. That he has worked hard to sanctify himself. I imagine Vera will not have the best outlook on the other half of our species after this. Also, I’m slightly worried about Brandon. But to ease everyone’s fears, we spot him around town in the present day so I guess he doesn’t die horribly as a child.

Shortly after their finishing trip, Vera makes the bold move of breaking into the basement. It is, predictably, a torture dungeon. She walks around looking at all the implements very casually. Eventually she turns her attention to the man, chained up and dying on the floor. She is incredibly cool with this. In fact, she already knew he would be there. She even knows that he only has one day left until his murder. The kids are not alright. She runs back to her room and her imaginary friend type buddy person tells her they are proud. Out loud. So that’s odd.

Adult Vera decides it’s time to visit the basement again. It has been both gutted by police and then preserved for the house’s tourists. As she walks through the room, she notices a small peephole in the ceiling. Apparently, she blocked this little detail out in all that trauma therapy as an adult. She notices some scratches along the wall. A sound from above sends her running back to her room where she is sure someone just stood. Instead, she finds the gouges in her floor, under her bed, around where the peephole on this side. Her bedroom is directly above the torture basement. And based on a note she finds from her father’s journal, he wondered if she ever watched him work through that very peephole. This is not a family business, sir. So not invite your child to participate.

Vera’s childhood imaginary friend tells her she should not watch the scary basement activities, but Vera kinda thinks it’s cool. I like this friend. Vera is scaring me a bit. Vera meets up with Brandon only to find out his DAD IS MISSING. Welp, we know where he is. And frankly, so does Vera, but she suggests he probably ran off with some other woman. She knows his dad is about to be dead and thinks now is the time to get back at him for his shitty comment earlier. I don’t like this. And it is about now that I am done rooting for her. Good timing on my part. She kisses Brandon, like attack kisses him and he is understandably not into it. She rushes home pissed off by this development only to take it out on, shocking to all I’m sure, Brandon’s dad, who is tied up in the basement. Vera shouts horrific things to him as he lies crying in pain, both emotional and physical. It is horrible to behold.

Back to the current times… Given all the spooky under the bed things happening, Vera replaces it with a bed without a space beneath it. She gets the bed from what I can only assume is Ikea. I recognize that building experience. She spends the night in her new bed 100% sure everything is going to be spectacular. If only these things were so simple, but it is never the bed that is haunted. She wakes up feeling a little askew. Mostly because the bed is in a different place and now propped up in an open drawer. This ghost is gentle cause girly didn’t even wake up. And all her letters from her dad are gone, so it may also be a thief.

Vera is 13 and pretty bent out of shape that Brandon won’t talk to her. Because she is insane and he is making smart choices. She thinks it’s because he is a big greasy man. She thinks she can fix this, so she invites him over to see the basement of horrors. Getting him tied up ends up being harder than expected and he almost gets away. Vera pushes a knife into his stomach to do a little grease letting. At first she feels excited and then confused and worried when she realizes it is in fact blood and not grease pouring out of him. She rushes to her father for help. They return to the basement where someone…something has started clumsily to bandage Brandon. And her dad scoops up Brandon and gets him to the hospital.

Vera now feels the house’s haunting is confirmed after her midnight bed moving. This prompts her to go check out our resident haunted paintings master’s work. I will say that this was a little disappointing. I don’t know what I expected. Like interactive ghost paintings, I guess. Instead, James is using parts of the house, like the old front porch wood, to paint on and carve out images. The artistic concept is interesting. I just expected there to be a supernatural element to it all. Oh, and he is the one who stole Vera’s letters. To use in his art. Apparently, Daphne is planning to leave the house to him so he thinks he can just take whatever he wants. Wow. Absolutely no one in this book is redeemable.

The next morning Daphne warns Vera to leave. Before she can decide, James storms in angry that all his paintings have been destroyed. He says by Vera. She didn’t do it, though. In this chaos, she decided that Crowder House is hers and she is not letting James have it. I guess James doesn’t really believe in ghosts because he thinks Vera is the only one who could have done it.

Vera is 13 and Daphne is pissed. Francis is on his way to prison forever for killing so many people. There were obvious questions when he took Brandon to the hospital and he confessed to everything to prevent Vera from being questioned. Daphne is angry and tolerates Vera only until she can leave the house 5 years later.

Vera is ready to see the monster under the bed. She watches from her closet all night, but it isn’t until early morning that something finally happens. A pink, fleshing, too many arms, worm kinda thing pops out from under the bed. Supernatural elements confirmed. Until now, I wasn’t sure that James didn’t move the bed. It tells her she isn’t supposed to see it and turns off the lights. But that cat is out of the bag now and Vera follows it down the stairs. She finds it climbing into Daphne’s skin. Like those aliens in Men in Black.

So Daphne’s been dead most of the time that we have seen her. In fact, it was the worm thing that called Vera to come to the house in the first place, although the worm and Daphne were sharing control at the time. And the worm thing is actually looking out for Vera. It was Daphne who was a monster. The worm is basically the embodiment of the house. And all those times Vera was talking to her imaginary friend. She was really talking to the house. It’s having a tough time because James is tearing it up to make his art.

James walks in at just the wrong moment. He thinks that it’s Daphne talking, of course. Vera suggests that James should leave now, since Daphne isn’t well, but he has other ideas. He grabs Vera and throws her out the front door. Once outside, the house won’t let him back in. Vera knocks him down, and after some maneuvering, bashes his head into the porch. Again and again until he is no longer a problem.

I think she and the house live happily ever after. But hopefully with fewer murders.

The relationship that is built between Vera and the house is fascinating and I barely scratched the surface. If you’re interested, grab Just Like Home and see for yourself. Don’t forget to stick around for The Grip of It next week. Grab that one here. Read about it here.