Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into the second Josh Malerman book I have checked out, Incidents Around the House. Having enjoyed Bird Box quite a bit I was expecting to enjoy this one much more than I did. Overall, the plot isn’t terrible, but it was executed in a way I just did not enjoy, with characters I struggled to follow.

Main Characters:

Bela – A young girl and our main character in the story. The book is told through the perspectives of herself and her family, and her character addition added a very childish nature to the book. Bela and her family have their lives turned upside down when Bela tells her parents that a woman named Other Mommy has been living in her room for a long time and is looking for something from her that she isn’t sure she can give.

Ursula and Russ – Bela’s parents, who have their own secrets just like their daughter. Struggle to navigate how to protect their family from this paranormal being that is looking to destroy them.

Other Mommy – The paranormal entity haunting Bela is genuinely creepy in concept. The idea itself is strong and definitely has the potential to be deeply unsettling.

My Review

I really, really, thought I was going to like this one so much more than I did. Sadly, Incidents Around the House goes wrong in so many ways, and not in an enjoyable way. I found myself so aggravated by the tone of the book, the childish aspects, and just how these characters were handling themselves. It also just ended up being kind of boring and repetitive as it went on. Given that Bela is a young girl, I understood why it was written this way; she’s a young child trying to process terrifying things happening around her, but personally, I just could not connect with the childish narration style. Overall, I landed on rating the book a 4/10, and while I wouldn’t really recommend this one to others, I do encourage checking out some of Josh Malerman’s other stuff, because it is much better.

The story follows young Bela, whose life becomes increasingly terrifying when a paranormal entity she calls “Other Mommy” begins haunting her home. As the presence grows more invasive and dangerous, Bela’s family struggles to understand what’s happening and how to protect her. Told through Bela’s childlike perspective and her untrustworthy parents’ eyes, the story leans heavily into psychological and supernatural horror as reality becomes harder to trust.

I enjoyed Bird Box by Josh Malerman, so I went into this expecting another creepy, tension-filled horror story, but this honestly came close to being a DNF for me. The frustrating part is that the premise itself isn’t bad at all. A young girl being hunted by a horrifying paranormal being? That should absolutely work for me. And there are moments where the concept of Other Mommy feels genuinely unsettling.

The execution just did not land for me personally. The biggest issue was the narration style. Since the story is told through Bela’s perspective, everything is written with a very childlike voice and understanding of the world. I completely understand why Malerman chose to do that; it makes sense for the story, but I just couldn’t get immersed in it. Instead of making things feel creepier or more emotionally impactful, it mostly just frustrated me and made the book feel repetitive.

And honestly, I didn’t find it scary. At all. Which is rough for a horror novel built around atmosphere and tension. The way the characters handled the paranormal situation felt oddly boring to me instead of suspenseful, and I kept waiting for the story to really go there in a way that never fully happened.

I also found myself annoyed with basically everyone in the book, which made it even harder to stay invested emotionally. The pacing didn’t help either. It felt like the story kept circling the same ideas and conversations without enough progression, so instead of tension building, I just found myself losing interest.

The ending was okay. Not terrible, not amazing, just kind of there. It didn’t completely ruin the book for me, but it also didn’t do enough to redeem the reading experience overall.

I don’t think this is an objectively awful book, and I can absolutely see why some readers would connect with it more than I did, especially if the child narration style works for them. But for me, it just never came together.

Definitely not the first Josh Malerman book I’d recommend, but don’t write him off from this review because he is a fantastic writer with lots of good ones to check out. I just hit a dud.

Thank you for checking out this review. I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to subscribe to the page to be one of the first to know when I release a new review.

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When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into horror writer Nat Cassidy’s creepy and hard-to-put-down book, When the Wolf Comes Home. While not the first of his reads I have picked up, I really enjoyed this one and found it to be unique, scary, and riveting. It made me really look forward to checking out more of his books in the future.

Main Characters

Jess: Our main girl and, honestly, one of my favourite parts of this book, she’s messy, flawed, and emotional. Her empathy drives a lot of her decisions, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. When Jess meets the boy, she is brought into a horror scene she never expected. In an attempt to save him, she is pushed to intense limits and is forced to put herself in danger to try and help save the day.

The boy: Running away from a monster, the boy crosses paths with Jess, and is forced to face his fears in no way a child ever should, but he also has much more control than we may suspect.

Cookie: Jess’s mother, who, while maybe not always the best mom, pulls through for her daughter when it’s needed the most.

The man:  The boy’s father, who follows Jess and him in an attempt to get him back, however, follows at a distance due to the danger that follows his son.

My Review

As mentioned before, I’ve checked out some of Nat Cassidy’s other books and found them to be scary, but extremely enjoyable. When the Wolf Comes Home is an action-filled, thrilling novel, filled with horror and some people’s worst nightmares. The characters are enjoyable (and sometimes aggravating), but the plot itself is unique, and unlike anything I’ve ever dived into before. I gave it an 8/10 rating overall and am looking forward to diving into more of Cassidy’s spooky tales in the future.

The story follows Jess as she gets pulled into a deeply unsettling and increasingly terrifying situation involving a young boy and something not quite right. What starts as concern quickly turns into something much darker, with reality bending in ways that feel both surreal and way too real at the same time. As things escalate, the book leans hard into fear, what it does to us, how it changes us, and the choices we make when we’re pushed to our limits. Jess is forced to fight her greatest fears to protect the boy, but she also questions if she can really protect him from himself, or the realities of his world. The boy must question if he can fight off the monsters that haunt him, or crumble to the fear of his reality and what is chasing him.

As mentioned before, I’ve checked out other books of Cassidy’s, and when When the Wolf Comes Home came across my way, I knew I had to check it out. I saw lots of positive reviews and felt like it lived up to the hype for sure. This book is so unique. Like, genuinely nothing I’ve read before. The plot is wild in a way that somehow still works and makes sense, and I was completely locked in watching it unfold. The creativity here is insane, and the way everything comes together? So satisfying. It’s heartbreaking at different points, intense in others, but also loving and sweet in others. It has its gory parts, and some areas are a bit harder to stomach, but if you read lots of horror like I do, it’s really nothing crazy.

It’s fast-paced, emotional, and straight-up creepy. Not just surface-level scary, either, it gets under your skin. The kind of book where you feel uneasy even when nothing is technically happening because you are just waiting for that other shoe to drop. What really stood out to me is how much it focuses on fear. Not just the classic there’s something scary chasing you theme, but how fear actually changes people. The decisions, the reactions, the spiral, it all felt very intentional and honestly a little too real at times.

Jess carried this book for me. I loved her. She’s not perfect, and that’s exactly why she works so well. Her empathy, even when it complicates things, made everything hit harder emotionally. And yeah, the kid can be annoying, but in a way that makes sense. He’s a child dealing with trauma, and the book doesn’t shy away from that. If anything, it adds to the emotional weight.

This is not a feel-good book. Like, at all. My heart hurt more than once. But it’s a damn good one.

I had such a good time with this, and it definitely solidified that I need to keep reading more from Nat Cassidy.

Has anyone else checked out When the Wolf Comes Home, or any other of Nat Cassidy’s reads? What did you think, and what others would you recommend?

Thank you for checking out this review! I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to subscribe to the page on the bottom of the site to be one of the first to know when I post a new review.

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