In Incidents Around the House, terror creeps into the quiet spaces of a family home. It gathers slowly, settling into corners and hallways until the familiar begins to feel unsafe. Josh Malerman builds his horror through intimacy rather than scale, turning an ordinary household into something quietly disturbing.

At the centre of the novel is eight-year-old Bela, who lives with her “Mommy,” “Daddo,” and grandmother in what should be a normal household. For years, she has been visited by a presence she calls “Other Mommy,” an entity that lives in her closet and speaks to her when no one else is around.

Every day, Other Mommy asks the same question: “Can I go inside your heart?”

Bela always refuses.

The chaos that follows all stems from this deceptively simple premise. Malerman constructs the narrative entirely through Bela’s perspective, rendering the world in a voice shaped by childhood. Sentences are spare and direct. Dialogue often appears without quotation marks. Conversations between adults are overheard only partially, filtered through a vocabulary that cannot yet fully articulate what is happening.

This stylistic choice is central to the novel’s power. We see only what Bela sees. We know only what she can comprehend. The limitations of her voice create a claustrophobic reading experience, trapping us inside her confusion and fear.

Other Mommy does not announce herself through violence or spectacle. Her presence is patient, almost courteous. When Bela continues to refuse her request, the disturbances in the house escalate. The “incidents” of the title refer to these creeping disruptions, small at first, then increasingly difficult for the family to ignore.

As tension grows, the household itself begins to strain. Bela’s parents are already navigating cracks within their marriage, and the pressure of the unexplained presence deepens those fractures. Malerman captures how children absorb a home’s emotional climate long before they understand it. Bela senses instability even when she cannot name it.

Malerman has explored unseen threats before. In Bird Box, terror came from something that could not be looked at directly. Here, the danger is smaller in scale but more personal: the threat is not to the world, but to a child.

Sustaining a child’s voice across an entire novel is a formidable undertaking. At times, the repetition and simplicity of Bela’s narration can feel relentless. Yet that relentlessness is deliberate. The absence of adult interpretation denies the reader analytical distance. We cannot step outside Bela’s fear; we must inhabit it.

Gradually, the novel reveals itself as a meditation on vulnerability, consent, and the fragile architecture of the family unit. Other Mommy’s repeated question, ‘Can I go inside your heart?’, reverberates beyond its literal meaning. It becomes a question about boundaries, trust, and the spaces we allow others to occupy within us, along with the consequences when those boundaries are tested.

The line between external threat and psychological manifestation remains blurred throughout the novel. Whether Other Mommy exists independently or emerges from the family’s internal tensions remains unresolved, allowing the uncertainty to deepen the dread.

Recognised by Esquire as one of the best horror novels of 2024 and nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror, Incidents Around the House has clearly resonated with contemporary readers. Its appeal lies not in gore or grand mythology, but in its ability to evoke a fear that feels uncomfortably close to home.

Some readers seeking high-concept spectacle may feel restrained. The story unfolds slowly, building tension through repetition and atmosphere rather than sudden shocks. But, for those drawn to psychological horror and domestic unease, its quiet persistence proves far more unsettling.

Ultimately, Incidents Around the House lingers because it understands that the most enduring horrors are patient. They do not shout. They whisper, asking gently and repeatedly, to be let in.

Unsurprisingly, a major motion picture adaptation is on the way. Retitled Other Mommy, the film is directed by Rob Savage (Host, The Boogeyman). Starring Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, and Dichen Lachman, it is currently scheduled for release in October 2026.

The challenge for any adaptation will be preserving Bela’s perspective. The novel’s power lies in its unwavering commitment to her limited understanding, and translating that intimacy to the screen will require careful handling.

Revisited ahead of its cinematic debut, Incidents Around the House reflects modern horror’s inward turn. Sometimes the most frightening place is not the world outside, but the room just down the hall.

Other works by Josh Malerman

If Incidents Around the House unsettles you, Malerman’s wider body of work continues his exploration of unseen threats, psychological tension, and fractured realities:

• Bird Box (2014)

• Malorie (2020)

• Black Mad Wheel (2017)

• Daphne (2022)
• Spin a Black Yarn (2023)

Across apocalyptic terror, experimental horror, and intimate psychological dread, Malerman’s fiction consistently probes the boundaries between perception and fear.

Discover more fiction that unsettles with Victoria Freudenheim

If Incidents Around the House reminds you how quietly fear can take root, explore our reviews across horror and thrillers, where atmosphere matters as much as plot.

Or, if you’re in the mood for something different, browse our latest reviews across literary fiction, crime, contemporary, and romance. For more bookish inspiration, keep up to date with the Victoria Freudenheim blog too.