Incidents Around the House

A Novel

By: Josh Malerman

Narrated by: Delanie Nicole Gill

“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

A chilling horror novel about a haunting, told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box

“This book is the monster that lives inside your closet.”—Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

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.

©2024 Josh Malerman (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Deeply discomfiting, imaginatively ripe, yet ruthlessly efficient . . . Simply put—and I do not say this lightly—Incidents Around the House is the most purely effective horror novel I have ever read.”—Esquire, “Best Horror Books of 2024”

“A disturbing bedtime story told by a broken child, this book IS the monster that lives inside your closet.”—Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

“A gleeful, mean, old-school scare machine . . . You just have to turn the first page to set it off.”—Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Horror Movie

Omg, please no more Bella...

My title seems dramatic but stay with me here

I know that Bella is a child with a child's mind, but I was done with her by the mid mark.

I think it was more how this was written that got me.

For example, if there was be a conversation between her parents but each line was followed by Mom said, Daddo said, etc. This was really bad if there was an argument.

It might have even been the way the child was made to sound. I'm guessing ai was used to make the narrator sound like a kid

All that though would have been livable if this was scary and had a better ending.

Nothing really happened until the end, nothing really scary happened until the end, and once again Josh wrote a story with an ending that did not really have an ending.

All in all, this was middling.

it was different

This was no cookie cutter version of a horror novel. Great reading performance. Realistic characters. I lived the voice in this story. Unpredictable. Suspenseful.

Really scary!

Loved it. Couldn’t put it down. The end dragged out a bit but whatever, I was genuinely scared. Narrator was incredible. Nice one!

kept me guessing

I really enjoyed the not knowing
surprised ending caught me off guard. couldn't stop listening.

Great read!

Maybe I'm weird, but I wasn't at all freaked out by this book. Certainly, the way little Bela describes Other Mommy's appearance is a bit creepy. Every time Other Mommy asked Bela if she could go into her heart, I'd chuckle. It made me think of Oh from the movie Home, when Tip shuts him in the convenient store cooler, and he asks if he can come into the out. Still, this was a really great page-turner of a book that I really enjoyed.

the child's creepy voice

I loved that it used the child's voice. I don't think it would have been such a creepy book if it wasn't for the child. really enjoyed.

Definitely creepy

Very creepy, definitely makes you feel the desperation the characters are feeling. I admire the creativeness of the child voice narration but to be honest it was kind of annoying, I thought I’d get over it as the book progressed but I didn’t, lucky the book was very good and i stuck with it despite the narration,

Creepy

It took a little bit to get into but once things start to rev up it is good! Finished in 2 days!

Narration was incredible, story was so good

I felt the author didn’t fall into modern tropes, which was nice, it felt like he respected the reader enough to keep the story extremely interesting.

alright story, better performance

the story perspective was intriguing. it became very repetitive in the last 3 hours. I mean this literally - to the point that I thought my app had glitched. the particular section this starts to occur likely works much better when reading than when the narrator is providing the voices to the characters and the listener knows who is speaking already,
the performance is decent. would have been better if I'd slowed it down, but when i realized that, I was too far in and it would have taken me out of the listening experience more than the digitalization robotic voice. story was decent, more drama-horror than horror-drama.