What to read next
Books Like Look What the Cat Dragged In: More Unsettling Supernatural Thrillers
The odd pleasure of Penny's story is getting to look at the evidence as her cartoons change. Hidden Pictures comes closest to that. The other books here follow the fear that something familiar has become unsafe, from a set of puppets to an opening in a museum wall.
Read my review of Look What the Cat Dragged In by Jason Rekulak.
Jason Rekulak’s books and where to start
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The full shortlist
Why each book belongs here
The first five keep some form of horror in play. The last is Rekulak's family thriller, where the hard thing to read is a room full of people.
2
How to Sell a Haunted House
- Similar because
- Louise returns to Charleston after her parents die and has to clear out their house with her brother Mark. The place is full of her mother's puppets. They can look ridiculous one moment and menacing the next, much as Godfrey can make Penny's house feel cozy one moment and dangerous the next.
- Different because
- The job of selling the house makes Louise and Mark deal with each other and the family history they inherited. The puppets push the horror toward a more physical confrontation. Penny's drawings ask you to watch for evidence that the person making them can't quite trust.
3
The September House
- Similar because
- Margaret keeps living in her Victorian home even though its walls bleed each September. Both books find a nasty kind of humor in the effort to keep an ordinary household going while the house gives its occupant reasons to be afraid.
- Different because
- Margaret already knows the house has rules and has worked out ways to get through the month. When her husband disappears and her daughter comes looking for him, those accommodations are harder to maintain. Penny starts with new disturbances she can't yet fit into any pattern.
4
The Hollow Places
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
- Similar because
- Kara discovers a hole in the wall of her uncle's oddities museum. Like Penny's basement, a familiar room becomes the place where the ordinary explanation stops helping. Kara and her friend Simon can still joke together while they work out what the opening means.
- Different because
- The Hollow Places lets Kara and Simon step into a landscape of willows and bunkers. The strangeness has a geography they can explore. In Rekulak's book, the change is harder to pin down because it shows up in Penny's health and drawings.
- Reading note
- The friendship has room for jokes and practical problem-solving, even when the places Kara can safely go begin to shrink.
5
What Moves the Dead
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
- Similar because
- Alex Easton visits a sick friend at the Usher estate and notices odd wildlife and fungi around the house. Penny also has to consider whether illness and the strange things she sees at home have a common cause. In both books, an animal behaving oddly matters because it changes how you read the other clues.
- Different because
- What Moves the Dead makes the body and the landscape part of the same Gothic investigation. The estate, lake and fungi give Easton physical evidence to inspect. Penny has to make sense of images she has drawn and experiences she can't easily show anyone else.
- Reading note
- This is a short reworking of Poe's Usher story with more explicit bodily unease. It opens the Sworn Soldier series and needs no earlier book.
6
The Last One at the Wedding
- Similar because
- Frank goes to his estranged daughter's wedding hoping to get back into her life. Like Penny taking on a small favor, he enters a situation where attachment makes it hard to step away once his suspicions grow.
- Different because
- Frank has to read the silences of a wealthy family at a private estate. The danger is social and human, and the clues come from people and their stories. This is a separate family thriller for readers curious about Rekulak's suspense outside illustrated horror.
Side-by-side
Pace, darkness, romance, and difficulty
| Book | Pace | Darkness | Romance | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hollow Places | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| What Moves the Dead | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
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