“A chilling ghost story. . . . A decades long, globe-spanning saga of adventure, betrayal, love, and fate [about] one of Welcome to Night Vale’s most enigmatic and terrifying characters. . . How these stories converge and how the narrator becomes immortal are merciless in their ingenuity and immensely satisfying. . . . A funny, terrifying, and unpredictable slice of Night Vale’s macabre … Vale’s macabre history.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
From the New York Times bestselling authors of Welcome to Night Vale and It Devours! and the creators of the hit podcast, comes a haunting novel set in the world of Night Vale and beyond.
In the town of Night Vale, there’s a faceless old woman who secretly lives in everyone’s home, but no one knows how she got there or where she came from…until now. Told in a series of eerie flashbacks, the story of The Faceless Old Woman goes back centuries to reveal an initially blissful and then tragic childhood on a Mediterranean Estate in the early nineteenth century, her rise in the criminal underworld of Europe, a nautical adventure with a mysterious organization of smugglers, her plot for revenge on the ones who betrayed her, and ultimately her death and its aftermath, as her spirit travels the world for decades until settling in modern-day Night Vale.
Interspersed throughout is a present-day story in Night Vale, as The Faceless Old Woman guides, haunts, and sabotages a man named Craig. In the end, her current day dealings with Craig and her swashbuckling history in nineteenth century Europe will come together in the most unexpected and horrifying way.
Part The Haunting of Hill House, part The Count of Monte Cristo, The Faceless Old Woman Who Lives in Your Home is a lively tale of loyalty, betrayal, and revenge, that will have you looking around the corners of your own home…just in case.
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I loved every minute of this book. The old woman (whose name we never learned, or at least I never learned it – maybe I missed it, but I don’t think so) is a fascinating, complex character. She’s sort of a mix between the Good Witch of the North and Hannibal Lecter. If you can get your mind around that one. I actually really loved her, for all that she’s terrifying, homicidal and totally psychotic. Yeah, ok sure, I saw the end coming but there were plenty of twists throughout the story that I never anticipated. This is definitely not a cookie-cutter story, it follows no “formula”, and will keep you entertained from beginning to end.
A cinematic tale full of endless twists, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is a unique horror story with a rare swashbuckling and complex female protagonist I couldn’t get enough of. The writing throws you into a colorful, intelligent world of ups and downs, scares and laughs, and nuanced heroes and villains that keeps you gripped with anticipation for an ending you know will horrify you. Just when you think you know what’s happening, the Faceless Old Woman will flip you around and make you question morality with a delicious, fun, well-crafted frustration.
Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor’s foray into the book world continues, each time with better and better results. Their names are most known in the podcast sphere, with the wild success of Welcome to Night Vale, the podcast in which this book series takes place in. If you’re unfamiliar, Welcome to Night Vale is told from the perspective of a small-town radio announcer, who reports on the goings-on of his bizarre hometown, its residents, and his boyfriend. It’s part humor, part love story, part horror. The Welcome to Night Vale book series all takes place within that universe, but you don’t need to listen to the podcast to understand them, so if you’re not a podcast person don’t avoid this book because you think you won’t get it. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home takes place mostly outside of Night Vale, telling the story of one of its most infamous residents, and is probably the book most removed from the Night Vale universe at all. If you’re looking to dip into this universe, this book is the way to go.
Those of us who haven’t listened to the podcast may be unfamiliar with The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home (because that’s literally her name as well as the title of the book). She’s an old woman, faceless, who secretly lives in your home (every home), and can alternatively be a helpful benefactor who takes care of your children, a nuisance who puts spiders in your shoes, or a fully-fledged murderess. She’s been a prominent figure in the Night Vale world for many years, and this book details her backstory from when she was young, had a face, and did not secretly live in your home. This novel spans her entire life, from literally the moment of her birth to her transformation into an entity that exists in the peripherals of our vision. This novel begins outside of Night Vale and takes place mostly outside of it as well, taking us from 19th century Europe to the present day, spanning seas, countries, and continents as our unnamed protagonist goes on her quest for vengeance. This novel is told in a dual perspective, the faceless old woman’s upbringing and life story, as well as smaller sequences in the town of Night Vale, where she steers a man named Craig through life, alternatively helping and harassing him in turn. As with most dual perspectives, these stories eventually intersect, but the realization of how they do that is both satisfying and horrifying.
This novel is a little different from the rest of the books in this series (they’re all standalone, by the way). Podcast listeners know a little bit more about our protagonist than new readers, but mostly everyone will be caught up at the end of the first chapter, so I won’t count this as a spoiler: the faceless old woman is an unseen, mostly malevolent being. Given the protagonist’s humble beginnings as a young girl on an orange grove, that makes this novel, above all, a tragedy. We know both from the podcast and the early chapters of this novel how the story will end: her death, an unpleasant one, and a personality embittered and rotten. Welcome to Night Vale and its in-universe books tend to take a lighter tone, not shying away from dealing with difficult subjects, but rarely does it go so grim. This novel, despite its fantastical setting, shows us a grimmer reality and a sometimes hard-to-swallow truth: life often does not go as expected, and is rarely as fantastical as we want it to be. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, things go poorly. This is an appreciated deviation from the norm. Tragedies are rare, and the fact that The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home can maintain that oddball Night Vale narration and bit of humor while bringing us to our tragic foregone conclusion is a superb feat. It also means that this novel can be a bit of a downer, so if you’re looking for more irreverent stories, you’d be better off sticking to the first two novels of this series.
Welcome to Night Vale podcast content relies on the mysteries of its tiny town, from the origin of the eldritch horrors that run the city council to the mysterious natural disasters that plague its people. The Welcome to Night Vale novels normally seek to solve some of those mysteries, the first in the series giving us the backstory of the man in the tan jacket and the second on the religion of the Smiling God, but The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home doesn’t solve a lot for us. We learn the backstory of the titular character, but unlike the man in the tan jacket, we do not get any conclusion to her story, any solid explanation to her ephemeral state of being. Several mysteries are elaborated on and given a history, but not solved. If you are the kind of person who enjoys having their stories wrapped up neatly, or even wrapped up at all, this won’t suit you at all. It was refreshing, though, to have such a large universe to play in and authors that won’t hold your hand. Night Vale’s activities span far beyond its borders in this novel, giving us not only a view of an oddball town but a world mostly like ours, but perhaps an inch to the left. As with all Night Vale content, you’re going to have to roll with it.
This novel cinches Jeffery Cranor and Joseph Fink’s abilities to write both in the podcast and novel format, and while podcast listeners may appreciate the backstory of this elusive figure, the book is easily accessible for anyone looking for a bizarre story and willing to roll with the punches. The writing has that traditional Night Vale style, equal parts lyrical and spine-chilling, but this story felt so much more personal than the last two novels. Removing the faceless old woman from Night Vale almost entirely and showing her in the real world was a smart move, as we got to see this character develop in a world mostly familiar to our own and live a more relatable life. We tighten our perspective, giving a better opportunity for character development and personal arcs without the weirdness of Night Vale distracting us in the background. The book is still plenty weird, don’t get me wrong, but this is definitely the most character-driven, poetic, and tragic book of the series. Seeing the Night Vale universe dip into such a different tone and world was refreshing, and confirmed that this series is definitely a spin-off that deserves the hype.
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