A Guest in the House
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
New York Times' Notable Book of 2023
Winner of the 2024 LA Times Book Prize
In Emily Carroll's haunting adult graphic novel horror story A Guest in the House, a young woman marries a kind dentist only to realize that there’s a dark mystery surrounding his former wife’s death.
After many lonely years, Abby’s just gotten married. She met her new husband—a recently widowed dentist—when he arrived in town with his young daughter, seeking a new start. Although it’s strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband’s first wife, the more things don’t add up. And Abby starts to wonder . . . was Sheila’s death really by natural causes? As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila’s memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life.
Emily's masterful balance of black and white, surreal colors, rich textures, and dramatic lettering is assured to bring this story to life and give readers a chill up their spine as they read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Echoes of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca abound in this fantastic and frightening graphic novel from Eisner Award winner Carroll (Through the Woods). Quiet convenience store clerk Abby has just recently married David, an older dentist and single father to Crystal. David's first wife, Sheila, died tragically. In something of an oft-used horror trope, Crystal has been seeing and drawing pictures of Sheila, and before long, Abby herself begins seeing a spirit identifying itself as Sheila. At first the specter appears creature-like before morphing into a beautiful princess from a fairy tale Abby used to read as a child—the same tale Crystal is reading now. To say any more about the story risks diluting its thrills and chills; the narrative takes readers to places both familiar and shockingly not. What's most remarkable is Carroll's phantasmagoric artwork, at once mesmerizing and teeth-clenchingly macabre, like Miyazaki gone goth. Almost every page is a dreamscape in which, like the hallways of a wondrous house, one might not mind getting lost. Personality-wise the characters are a bit milquetoast—Abby perhaps purposefully so—but Carroll's linework and coloring render them in shades melancholy, whimsical, and sinister. While the ending might invite more questions than answers, the wild turns taken and the dazzling visuals make this one scary good.
