Every childhood home is haunted, and each of us are possessed by our parents.
When their parents are both killed in a car accident, Louise and Mark Joyner are devastated but nothing can prepare them for how bad things are about to get. The two siblings are almost totally estranged, and couldn’t be more different. Now, however, both with equally empty bank accounts, they don’t have a choice but to get along. Their one asset? Their childhood home. They need to get it on the market as soon as possible because they need the money. Yet the house has morphed into a hoarder’s paradise, and before they died their parents nailed shut the attic door…
Sometimes we feel like puppets, controlled by our upbringing and our genes. Sometimes we feel like our parents treat us like toys, or playthings, or even dolls. The past can ground us, teach us, and keep us safe. It can also trap us, and bind us, and suffocate the life out of us. As disturbing events stack up in the house, Louise and Mark have to learn that sometimes the only way to break away from the past, sometimes the only way to sell a haunted house, is to burn it all down.
The story is divided into five main parts, each reflecting one of the stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Louise receives a phone call from her brother, Mark, telling her their parents died. She leaves her daughter, Polly, with Polly’s father and travels 3,000 miles to organise the funeral and divide the estate, assuming that her younger brother is incapable of doing either.
Louise grows less and less sympathetic as the story progresses, and her role as an unreliable narrator becomes apparent. We know she is hiding something but between all the creepy happenings while she is stuck in a house full of puppets and dolls with a brother she seems to hate, it is difficult to differentiate fantasy from reality. At around the mid-point, when an uncomfortable truth is finally revealed, Louise takes some long-awaited responsibility.
It’s an unpredictable book with twists and turns, moments of crazed laughter, and others of stomach-churning violence. Some scenes are touching, while others are nightmarish. How to Sell a Haunted House is a delight to read. Hendrix really knows how to build the stakes while making the readers care about very flawed characters.
There is a touching moment in Acceptance near the end of the book where Louise takes a step back and considers all that has happened: “Everything her mom had built, everything she had spent her life creating, everything that meant so much to her, it was gone.” My eyes grew moist as I mentally argued with the distraught protagonist. No, it hasn’t all gone, I thought. You and Mark survived and built a bridge between you, a shaky bridge, but one I hope you will strengthen. And that isn’t nothing. Your mom would believe it was a good trade.
If you’ve read the book already, let me know what you think. If you haven’t, I recommend you treat yourself to a copy and enjoy the manic ride.
If you’d like to check out the book or the author, there are some links for you below:
Happy Goat Horror 
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