Where her mother shows her nothing but bitterness and cruelty, her father always had love and approval – until Vera screwed everything up. Just Like Home alternates Vera’s cutting interactions with her mother Daphne in the present with rose-tinted memories of her childhood. A place that she can now return to, although she’ll find no welcome. A place where she knew who she was, and what she could be. She could have changed her name, of course, but it’s all she has left of her father and a time when things were better. Since being banished from her childhood home by her resentful mother, she has bounced from one dead-end job to the next, one short-term let to the next eviction. Vera Crowder has never been allowed to escape her past.
Where The Echo Wife examined toxic marriages and the stupidity of cloning your ex-wife (seriously dude, you didn’t think it through), Just Like Home tackles toxic families and trauma and the way these shape who we are – and who we want to be. I’ve always enjoyed Sarah Gailey’s work, but their recent pivot from alt history to off-kilter, sharp-edged thrillers driven by intimate personal drama has converted me from a passive admirer to an ardent fan. When her dying mother summons her after years of estrangement, Vera reluctantly returns to the house her father built.
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