When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…
How did I ended up reading multiple puppet horror books. Not to mention: THE INSIDE-OUT MAN??? fOR A CHRISTIAN PUPPET SHOW???
I already don’t like puppets. Playing pretend too hard scares me.
UM
UM??
Yeah, same.
These were just what I pulled out, but it was a fun read. Very engaging. I still can’t get over being stabbed in the eye by a needle and then the very (gags) visceral description of trying to blink with a needle in the eye (gags).
Let’s not think about that one or else I will definitely switch from the teeth going bad nightmares to being stabbed in the fucking eyeball.
Anyway, the first chunk of the book really plays ya. You end up wondering (alongside our main character Louise) whether everything is real or not. And then, well. A puppet gets shot and everything gets confirmed. I spent a huge chunk of the book hating Louise and her avoidant, non-communicative, hypocritical ass. Thank god the book is a character arc and she grows as a person. She starts to understand why her family is “like that”, why her brother hates her, why everything was always bursting at the seams and yet no one looked at the frays.
And it turns out to be good fun. Like many horror stories, the subtle horror ends up turning into a big to-do with fighting and such.
