The monster in your closet - ‘Incidents Around the House’ By Josh Malerman

5 Sept

Written By Rhys Penfold

Hello Horror Gremlins. Welcome back to another chaotic book review!

Today we have - imaginary drum roll - ‘Incidents Around The House’ by Josh Malerman.

We’ll be exploring the following aspects of this book:

A brief summary of what the book is all about.
Style + Structure of the book.
Did the book give me the Hebbie Jeebies? + Creepy moments.
My thoughts on the book - Rating.
Closing thoughts on the film adaptation of the book - Other Mommy (Coming to the big screen October 9th 2026)

SPOILER WARNING

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF WHAT THE BOOK IS ALL ABOUT:

The story is told through the perspective of an 8 year old girl ‘Bela’ who lives with her mommy (Ursula) and her ‘daddo’ (Russell/Russ) and, of course, ‘Other Mommy’ who lives in her closet. She keeps on asking the same question: Bela. Can I go into your heart?
Bela keeps on saying no; both because she hasn’t got a clue what it means + the idea of letting her in her heart makes her scared. Especially when her other mommy is getting tired of asking the same question and begins to act strange. So, she follows Bela outside of the house: She pretends to be her friend ‘Deb’ and reveals herself in this wooden construction at her local park. Her hands creep over the wooden pillars and she asks: Can I go into your heart? Bela screams and stacks it over a slide, hurting her head.
Her parents and her doctor don’t know what to do. But eventually, Bela’s real mother comes in to Bela’s room whilst she is talking to Other Mommy who is sitting on her bed. The sight petrifies her actual mother and she takes Bela with her and out of the house. They bounce from house to house. First their friend Dan’s house, then Ursula’s mother’s house. They sleep in cars, they relocate to her Evelyn’s house - an affluent lady who is a friend of Bela’s Grandma. They even call in a team of psychics headed by a Lady called ‘Lois’ who see Other Mommy as a malevolent spirit that has latched onto Bela. But, regardless of where they hide, other mommy still finds Bela and asks the same question.
They consort with the police and are given two of the best guard dogs they have. They patrol the premises and are set to assault anything that isn’t an approved smell (The dogs are scent trained - Sniff the clothes of the house occupants and only protect them). But, even with these guard dogs, they still cannot evade other mommy. The parents even try to stab other mommy with knives whilst she’s tucked away in the closet, but it doesn’t work.
They even hire an assassin who runs off after he sees it. Surprisingly happy with the encounter.
Lois comes back with a solution. She thinks she knows why Bela is being pursued by this ‘entity’, and so, she proposes that the thing is attached to her innocence. They make their way to a lake house in the hopes of preventing other mommy from following. At the lake house, they take away Bela’s innocence by telling her that her Daddo is not actually her Dad. Her real Dad had run-off once he realised that her mother was having an affair with her ‘Daddo’. This upsets Bela and as she is running away from the camp site by the lake, she sees other mommy speeding towards her on all fours. But once her parents catch her, she’s gone.
They think all is well and they make their way back to the house where they stay up all night watching films (Not for enjoyment of course. But to keep watch over the house). Mummy and Daddo are in bed whilst Grandma and Bela stay up to complete a puzzle. Grandma talks about houses and their limited room; a topic that eventually segways towards the dreaded question: Can I go into your heart?
Bela flees. The parents awake. Bela finds her real Grandma tied up in the closet and she hides in there whilst the parents confront other mommy. The showdown ends with the parents dead on the floor of Bela’s room. She’s crying into her covers and she finally lets Other Mommy in. They switch places and now Bela is where other mommy comes from and the book ends with Bela (Now possessed by other mommy) meeting other mommy in the closet for the first time. The ending takes us back to the past when the two first met and the book ends.

STYLE + STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK:

This book utilises the unreliable narrator technique through it’s use of Bela’s perspective. An 8 year old girl with limited understanding of herself, of others and her environment; meaning that the reader only knows as much as she knows which is very little. Thus, the element of surprise and lack of awareness of what is going, stimulates an uncomfortable perspective for an effective scare.
In the film, the POV could be from Bela’s perspective. But based on the third person narration in the trailer that encompasses multiple details of the environment, I don’t think the film is going to use the book’s perspective to conduct its HORRIFYING MOMENTS. I’ll be experiencing the events of the book in a very different light. All on the big screen with a tub of popcorn in hand. Exciting stuff :)

DID THE BOOK GIVE ME THE HEEBIE JEEBIES + CREEPY MOMENTS:

Indeed it did. There are so many horror moments in this book that will undoubtedly provide spine-chilling moments in the upcoming film. Here’s a list of the moments in the book that made me go NAAAH!:
- Bela is playing with her friend Deb in the park. Her friend escapes into this wooden construction in the playground seemingly filled with tall wooden pillars that make it easy for her to hide. Deb asks Bela, from behind these pillars, ‘Can I go into your heart’. Bela screams for her mommy, runs away and falls from a height from where the slide begins.
- We are in the house of rich woman. A friend of Bela’s Grandma. Bela awakes in the middle of the night and needs to have a wee. But, her parents told her that she isn’t allowed to move about without a grown-up. But they are all asleep! So, she makes her way through the darkness enveloping the hallway and hurries to the bathroom at the end of the hall. She makes it. But there’s a shadowy silhouette behind the shower curtain. She pushes it away. Nothing is there. Strange? But she really needs to go for a wee, and so, she does. But, as she starts weeing she realises that she’s not sitting on a toilet. Toilets don’t have hairy arms do they? She’s sitting on other mommy’s lap. WHAAAT!
  - If the film manages to pull this horror scene off, it will make for one frightening scare I TELL…YOU…NOW.

Other mother in ‘Coraline’ 2009 - Queen of my nightmares when I was a kid.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK - FINAL RATING:

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. So much so that I read it twice. Not by choice mind you. I ran out of books on holiday, But still, it had to be pretty good for me to come back for a second read.
I loved the unique style that Mr Malerman chose: The short descriptions adequately depicting the simple frame of mind of an 8 year old girl - A device that plunges the reader into a darkness that doesn’t provide them the subtle details and foreshadowing of an omniscient reliable narrator.
I loved how it turned the tables with the horror that children experience as it also implicates the adults in the same experiences. It’s a not a simple ‘Oh honey don’t worry. It’s just a draft coming through a window’ type story. It’s a mentally stressing event that pushes all parties to their absolute limit as they deal with this near-omniscient force that hounds an 8 year old girl.
I loved how the ending circles back to the first interaction between Bela and Other Mommy which revealed that they are one and the same person. Many fans appear to be floating with the theory of a pocket universe wherein Bela is in an internal struggle with two parts of herself that she cannot reconcile with because she doesn’t have the knowledge to change. She’s only 8 after all and given the infinite loop that the ending implies, this suggests that she will always be 8. Forced to watch her parents die. Over and over and over again. Forced to never fully understand the horrors of other mommy and the cruelty of the world. Over and over and over again. That’s some pretty dark, but clever, stuff from Mr Malerman. Thoroughly impressed with this work.
PROBLEMS - The ending was a little ambiguous for the general public to understand. Many horrors books and films do this. Namely, utilising the gaping ambiguities and mysteries in the story to say ‘OOH. The horror is what you don’t know. Figure it out for yourself. Go on reddit. Watch YouTube videos to theorise, don’t forget to buy my book to theorise the different parts okay :). It kind of rings like that at parts. And don’t get me wrong. It works for the style that the book utilises and the horror is captured well through the unreliable perspective of Bela. But the ending made me question how far he was willing to extend those ambiguities - But, it works wonders for marketing :)
PROBLEMS - This is obviously inspired by the other mother in Coraline. Malerman nods a fair bit to the story in the following ways: The recurring symbol of houses like the house of the Beldam in Coraline (A metaphor for who you let in your life + what’s good and what’s bad for you - linking with the idea that Bela is too young to know something so big. So she keeps on going through an infinite loop where she cannot learn to grow) + the other mother + the pocket universe idea (Coraline has the pocket universe in the tiny door in the living room - IATH (Acronym for the book) portrays a potential pocket universe through the simple dialogue of all characters in the novel. If you read into the character dialogue, is quite short and simple, kind of like it was a child trying to mimic how an adult would talk and move + how children remember the strangest things in deep detail - we see this in the segments where the parents are talking about serious subjects and Bela memorises word for word in one big chunk of text (Something that is possible given that she has had infinity to memorise every word) + even the other mommy is described like a kids drawing with eyes on the side of its face, an abnormally large mouth and hair only on the back of her arms.
- It was fun having a nod to book that’s already been published and I think he utilises the other mommy concept very well…but given that its a more adult version of the concept, I was expecting a little bit more tension and horror than just stalking the family.
- For example: Look at other mommy in the above photo. I can remember three things she does in that film: She trapped the parents in this purgatorial state by ensnaring them in a snow globe + she hurts Coraline by grabbing her and thrusting her into a dark space behind a hallway mirror + she turns into a spider and nearly traps her soul in her pocket dimension forever + almost drags Coraline into dark well whilst Wyborn tries to save her.
- THAT WAS A KIDS FILM. AND MOST OF IT WAS IN THE BOOK! A KIDS BOOK!
- My point being is that it may have been better to have Other Mommy as a malevolent stalker that has no regard for human life. This doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary given that Malerman’s Other Mommy has spent infinity trying to get inside Bela’s heart. Even if its Bela switching with a good and bad part in each cycle, the part that is Other Mommy would surely be much more malevolent. Bela doesn’t appear to have amnesia after the events of the book, so she remembers this entity killing her parents and taking control of her. Why doesn’t she utilise the form of the other mother to hurt the entity or the people that care for her?
  - This is where the logic gets a little confusing and there appears to have been an opportunity to make the other mommy more terrifying by showing that this part of Bela was so tired of being stuck in this cycle that she will literally torture and kill people in broad daylight just to end it all.
RATING - 4 STARS - HORRIFYING READ

Poster for the cinematic portrayal of Josh Malerman’s ‘Incidents Around the House’
Click to watch the trailer!

CLOSING THOUGHTS ON THE FILM - OTHER MOMMY:

I am beyond excited for this film! OMG!
I’ve said my piece on the book, and so, my excitement is justified for the horror scenes that have great potential to be down-right terrifying.
I just have one looming concern: Will this film be like the film ‘Smile’ 2022?
- Other Mommy in the book isn’t described as smiling. She just stalks Bela and causes chaos as the book goes on + shape shifts to trick Bela into letting her go inside her heart.
- The trailer shows the wonderful Jessica Chastain as ‘other mommy’ smiling widely + the book gives her the possibility of shapeshifting whilst still utilising that same smile to trick Bela into going inside her heart. Sound familiar? - We of course see Smile utilising the same tools: Smiling, shapeshifting into anyone with the intention of getting inside the target and making them off themselves. Except in Bela’s case, other mommy gets inside her heart to repeat the events of the book all over again.
- This is where I started getting worried. This film has a lot of potential and I sincerely hope it pulls through. It would be a real shame for it to be another version of the ‘Smile’ films.