Review of Josh Malerman's Incidents Around The House.

Coraline, but seriously darker.

Josh’s novella collection, Spin A Black Yarn, was one of my favorite books of last year. I read it in two days. I talk about it enough that my wife has told me to stop.

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I got the Netgalley approval. It took me to some places—not the places I wanted to go—and scared the hell out of me. I would have read it in a day, but I needed breaks from the seriously freaky things happening.

I have been afraid of closets since I was a kid. I don’t know why, and I can never put it into words. My wife doesn’t get it. I don’t like them. If you’re like me, this book is for you. If you’re not, then it’s still the book for you.

It opens with a little girl, Bella. Her parents are having issues. They have parties all the time, and something is haunting her. The Other Mommy is not like the one from Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. It’s a terrifying descent into a family dealing with something traumatic happening to their kid as they deal with their lives.

Josh is very good at traumatic experiences. He writes Bella so well. We watch her struggle through the fear of Other Mommy, not knowing when she’ll pop up or when she’ll be at the end of the bed. This is a story that would do well as a screenplay.

I set the book down numerous times because of what was happening—the story's imagery. The description of Other Mommy is something out of my childhood nightmares. I knew something would come out of the closet. I felt it as a kid.

Josh captures a child's fear in this story: the fear of the Other Mommy, the fear of what’s going on with her parents, and the fear of not knowing how to make the Other Mommy go away.

It’s been a while since I felt a child’s fear in a story. Josh does it easily in this story.

The ending and the lead-up to the ending were unexpected but worked well for the story. I’ll be purchasing this when it is released next month.