Grady Hendrix

Louise returns home to Charleston to bury her parents only to find a spectacularly terrifying blast from the past waiting for her. Louise is beyond disbelief when her estranged brother, Mark, calls to tell her their parents are dead after a suspicious car accident. As she reluctantly returns home to South Carolina, the underachieving and crafty, Mark is already plotting how to cheat her out of her half of the house, while a pair of aunts try to make peace between the two. There are several show more horrifying points at work here...the fate of the literally hundreds of dolls their mother, Nancy, had made, collected, and obsessed over for many years...Mark’s boneheaded schemes... their collective means of expressing grief ...all are woven to introduce this tale. This author wastes no time in ratcheting the "Pennywise the Clown" vibe up to about 100 plus. It also comes as no surprise that the sibling's secret tormentor is none other than "Pupkin", their mother’s absolutely favorite puppet...the one that had always made Louise’s skin crawl. Mine also, Louise!! I grew to have a hate/love relationship with clowns... thank you, Stephen King...and thank you Grady Hendrix...now with puppets!! Louise had always hated all her mother's little creations...but she loathed "Pupkin" the most. Now this puppet is developing some new and disturbing habits. He's now prone to temper tantrums and homicidal rages when he doesn’t get what he wants...and since he can't yet warm-up to the idea that Nancy is dead, he just wants/demands that she come back home to him. Horrific visions of anthropomorphic dolls, a bloody, near-fatal misadventure, and emotional extortion including nail-biting child peril soon follow. "Pupkin", the puppet, doesn’t have the foul mouth of Chucky or the obvious menace of the clown, Pennywise... but the combinations of the two personalities provides a plethora of "nightmare fuel" and delivers the horrific landscape of terror in spades. Horror fans, and fans of Stephen King, will love this one...I am both, and I did. What a movie this would make! show less

Brilliant! This book lured me in with familiarity, I live in South Carolina, I've vacationed in Charleston and Moncks Corner. I've met every single character from this book at one time or another and they are all spot on.

Throughout a lot of this book I was infuriated by how these people were treating this situation. I know not all married people have the same relationship, but if my wife ever told me she saw something like Patricia saw I would be sharpening the machete and trying to get Sam show more and Dean Winchester to take my call.

Speaking of my true crime obsessed wife, all of the books read throughout the novel are now my required reading. We read this together and she was appalled at my ignorance of these books and the stories of these killers.

So thanks for a perfect novel Mr. Hendrix. True to life characters are rare in horror sometimes, but I knew these women and I've been pissed off at these men in my day to day life. So now I have to go see if they have Helter Skelter or In Cold Blood at my library. show less

This book had me squirming fiercely multiple times, and covered with goosebumps many more. Grady Hendrix knows how to crank up the atmospheric dread factor. In this case, he had a head start, even, because dolls and puppets in bulk as a rule can be pretty frightening without being possessed and sadistically homicidal. Louise made me want to throttle her, the way she would flip-flop between sensible levels of self-preservation right to "This can't be dangerous because I don't want it to be!" show more delusional. I didn't think Mark could be redeemable in any way, so I was pleased that he was given a little more depth, even if the flaws remained. Very good, very violent, and I have no idea how there wasn't more than one permanent maiming (other than the deaths, I mean). show less

Why did I wait so long to read this book?!?! So freaking good. And I have to give props for Grady Hendrix, a male, for doing such an amazing job writing from the female perspective. His portrayal of young women going through pregnancy and childbirth was done so well and nuanced; so kudos to him!

Fern is sent to Florida to live in a "women's home" with other young unmarried women while waiting to give birth. This home is where parents send their shameful daughters for a few months as a guise show more for "going away to camp" or "staying with an aunt for the summer," while in reality they are just waiting to give birth and adopt out the babies. It's the summer of 1970 and the Florida heat is stifling. With no access to news of the outside world and not much to do other than chores, Fern cannot wait for the bookmobile to come. When the librarian gives her a book on witchcraft, she and some of the other girls finally have something important, power. Can Fern and pregnant friends turn things around? Or are they getting involved in something that will place them in even more precarious straights? Delightful, wonderful. I could not put it down! show less