Review: Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

First, let me get my unbridled enthusiasm out of the way. I loved this book. You will love this book. You should just go buy this book. Why waste time with my fancy words? Throw your money at Sarah Gailey as soon as you possibly can.

Right, now we've got that out the way ...

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey is about Vera Crowder returning to her family home because her mother, Daphne, is dying. The house has a certain notoriety as the place where her father, now deceased, murdered dozens of men. Vera has complicated feelings towards her family, her house, and the monsters that live under her bed. The story centres in on complicated family relationships, and how things work when everyone has a little bit of foulness inside of them.

The thing that most struck me as I read Just Like Home were the many twisty reveals that come throughout the book, although they're all handled very casually. There are very few end-of-chapter cliff-hangers, but I almost always felt off-kilter and surprised as I learned about Vera's younger life and her adult self -- not to mention her mother's own secrets.

Vera, for all her sins, is an engaging protagonist who it's easy to love, even as her personality is shown to be more complicated than plain black-and-white. Gailey gets us maybe not rooting for her, but certainly sympathetic towards her situation early on, and it's later hard to let go of that initial affection. Gailey addresses feelings of unlovability, and the pains people might go through in order to feel loved, in her acknowledgements, and these feelings are perfectly and painfully displayed in Vera.

Vera's father might be the draw for many horror fans to this book. I certainly looked forward to maybe getting a voyeuristic intimacy with a murderer on a par with Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates. However, Francis Crowther is oddly silent in this book. All we see of him, we experience through Vera -- through her memories. Any words of his referenced in the text -- his letters, his journal, his written confessions -- are never shared with the reader, which I think is a really interesting choice. The reader might come for a peek at a monster, but what they get instead is Vera, and she doesn't disappoint.

Just Like Home is an absorbing read for anyone who enjoys the forbidden thrill of reading about people who do horrific things, with a side order of empathy, and space for some supernatural weirdness.

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey is out on the 21st July, and follow the link to pre-order from your favourite retailer.

With thanks to Netgalley.co.uk and the publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, for providing and e-advanced reader copy.