Horror ABCs: Incidents Around the House
Written by Emmapanada: 2/25/2025
Hello and welcome back to the horror novel review series, Horror ABCs! In this series I go to the horror section of various bookstores near me and use a random number generator to find a random horror novel to read and review! Today’s entry is Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman, the author of Bird Box, which was turned into a wildly successful movie on Netflix (that I haven’t watched).
I was first introduced to Incidents Around the House through Tiktok. I saw a number of creators adding it to their favorites of the year list, and I saw some others talk about it being one of their biggest disappointments of the year. Those who were disappointed by it primarily talked about how they didn’t think it was scary enough. This is a criticism I often dismiss when it comes to horror media, because not all horror needs to be scary. All these videos piqued my interest in the novel. When I saw it at the bookstore I decided to give it a try, and I’m so glad I did.
I can understand why certain people wouldn’t like this book, but I loved it. I started it one night at around 1 AM before going to bed, and the next day I finished it around 3 PM. The book fully captured my interest, and is the first book in this series that actually creeped me out. I wouldn’t call it incredibly scary, perhaps it would be if you had kids, but it made my hair stand on edge at times. While wasn’t super comfortable walking around in the dark while I was reading it, I didn’t get any nightmares or anything from it.
The book itself is told from the perspective of an 8 year old girl named Bela. Her parents are loving toward her, though they have problems in their marriage that Bela often catches glimpses of or hears them talking about. At night, Bela is visited by Other Mommy, a creature that often approaches her from her closet, asking to be let into Bela’s heart. Bela has constantly refused Other Mommy’s request, which causes Other Mommy to try and trick Bela into letting her in.
The style the book is written in is jarring for the first few pages. Bela doesn't use descriptive language often, and doesn’t use quotation marks for when people are talking. However, the style isn’t so foreign that it’s hard to make sense of throughout the book. I got used to it after a chapter or two, and that seems to be the common experience. While I appreciated the writing style because it made the book much faster and easier to read, I often wished Bela would describe Other Mommy to us better, or describe various other things. However, I took back this criticism as I got further in the book, because when Bela does describe something it adds an incredible level of horror to the situation. Often, Bela describes things she’s seen or things that have happened much later than she should simply because she’s a child, and a child wouldn’t think to mention those things in a story.
I thought the way Malerman uses this trick to influence tension in the narrative was incredibly compelling, interesting, and horrifying. I was delighted every time Bela told us a story about Other Mommy, or described what she looked like with a new detail.
Another interesting thing the book explores through this haunting narrative is the theme of a child feeling at fault for the problems in their parents’ relationship. In media we see this explored through divorce, but to see it captured in such an interesting way via a monster creating tension in the familial relationship was so fun and heartbreaking at the same time.
A lot of the complaints I’ve seen about Incidents Around the House, other than it not being scary enough, are grievances about Bela calling her parents Mommy and Daddo so much. People specifically seem to take offense to her calling her dad Daddo often, which is weird for me. I wasn’t annoyed by Bela’s narration of events or what she called people, but people who listened to the audiobook particularly seemed to be annoyed by this. At the beginning of the book I had a hard time determining how old Bela was because of what she called her parents and how she acted around them. Initially I thought she was maybe around 5, but the way she described certain things or the conversations her parents would have with her made me think that there was no way she was 5. It’s never directly said in the book how old she is, but the inside cover with a short description of the plot says she’s 8. At times I thought the way she talked to her parents was strange for an 8 year old, but I wasn’t too bothered by it. At the end of the day I don’t hang around 8 year olds very often, and when I was that age I had two older siblings that heavily influenced how I acted.
Other complaints for the book seem to concern its ending, which I understand but I won’t get into here because of spoilers. However, I really liked the ending save for one or two minor complaints.
Overall I thought this was an incredibly fun and great journey. I don’t know that it will leave a lasting impression on me, but for now I’m struck by it. For this reason I’m giving it 4.5 stars! While this book is around 370 pages, it reads very quickly. So if you’re looking for a good, creepy read for a weekend I’d definitely recommend giving this a try!
The Emmapanada Rating Scale:
5 Stars means that I thought this book was excellent, and it had a profound emotional impact on me.
4 Stars means that this was a really, really good book. The characters and narrative were well established and explored, and I had an amazing time reading it.
3 Stars means that this was a solid book. I had my problems with it, but overall I would still recommend it to certain people and I think it’s worthwhile.
2 Stars means I was disappointed by the book for a number of reasons. However, there were still one or two things about the book that I enjoyed and I can understand that even though I didn’t enjoy it fully, I could see others liking it.
1 Star means that I really just did not connect with this book in any way.