Incidents Around the House: A Novel: The Inspiration for the Movie "Other Mommy"
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A young girl’s troubled family is haunted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy” in this chilling tale from the author of Bird Box.
COMING SOON AS THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OTHER MOMMY, STARRING JESSICA CHASTAIN
“Deeply discomfiting, imaginatively ripe, yet ruthlessly efficient [with] claustrophobic terror that almost transcends articulation . . . Simply put—and I do not say this lightly—Incidents Around the House is the most purely effective horror novel I have ever read.”—Neil McRobert, Esquire
“This book is the monster that lives inside your closet.”—Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House
LOCUS AWARD FINALIST • BRAM STOKER AWARD NOMINEE
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay.
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel.
But Other Mommy needs an answer.
Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror about a family as haunted as their home.
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✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *Incidents Around the House* delivers deeply unsettling, atmospheric horror that evokes childhood anxiety and dread, with vivid, creepy im...
I consume almost nothing but horror, crime, and thrillers in every type of media that I use as entertainment…. So for a book to scare me, it takes a lot, this was absolutely having me look around corners and double check the dark. The front cover of my copy says “ This book is the monster that lives in your closet.” and I absolutely 1010% agree with that statement! Extremely creepy, full of dread, brings you back to childhood anxiety in somehow the best way possible the interpersonal relationships were great to read as well. I loved the character development. This was probably my favorite book so far this year! (And no- the movie didn’t live up to it sadly)
Hoping the movie will be better
This is my first horror book.
I really liked it even though the story was hard to analyze and figure out what the ending meant. Still, it was an easy read due to the narrator's perspective.
POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD:
*I loved the way that the author subtly added hints when it was Other Mommy impersonating someone, but it was still ambiguous enough until it was scary.
*The imagery of her as a spider is interesting, but I recalled Coraline's Other Mother quite often, down to the slouching of her in-between form. I was still able to distinguish them in my head every time I was reminded that she had hair all over, which also reminded this was a more dangerous entity.
*I still have a hard time understanding what Other Mommy was, if there ever was a solid answer, and what it meant for her to take over Bela. Was she a demon? Probably not. Was she a manifestation of Bela's parents subtle neglect? I don't know. Was she the dissociation that comes with trauma? Maybe.
*I do often wonder if at the end, it was a m*rder s*icide by the father after realizing that his wife was cheating on him--but it would be so out of character.
*There is also the possibility that Other Mommy was never real and Bela was just Other Mommy-ing herself and she caused all the chaos. I don't know, it might be a reach,
*but the way Bela started purposely lying and having that end in the parents being dead... maybe Other Mommy entered her earlier than she thought and she was the one that m*rdered her grandmother and her parents. Did she have a psychotic break?
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