The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home

A Welcome to Night Vale Novel

By: Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor

Narrated by: Mara Wilson

From the New York Times bestselling authors of Welcome to Night Vale and It Devours! and the creators of the hit podcast, comes a new 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, and 100% about a faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home.

Best Nightvale book yet

The first two Nightvale books fell very hard into the category of "more Nightvale content" as in if you like the podcast, then the books are more of that. While there's nothing wrong with that, they did nothing to help the fact that Nightvale's writing started to feel stagnant.
The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home was not what I was expecting in the best way possible. It takes place almost entirely outside of Nightvale, so the "strange for strangeness's sake" kind of setting that usually applies to Nightvale doesn't come up as much. At times the writing almost feels too good for Nightvale which I realize sounds like a backhanded compliment but I mean it in the nicest way I can.
All that to say, if you like the podcast, you'll probably like this, but more importantly, if you don't like the podcast you might still like this book.

I've never been good at listening to audio books

I haven't listened to Night Vale in a while, so learning of the book was a pleasant surprise. Naturally, none of the libraries in Arizona have e-books of it. We're too busy having mountains and non-secret police. I remembered that Amazon had recently tried to entice me with Audible again, but my last experiment was awful. The narrator would go into such thick dialects on some characters I felt I'd need to follow with a book anyway! Other times, pacing can be odd, but seeing that Mara Wilson was reading this I knew going in exactly what I would get. The voice I expected from the narrator, the pacing my imagination would have supplied for that character, and the experience of a very long Night Vale immerssion. The first audio book for which I have no regrets.

A great backstory for an interesting character

If you listened to the other two Welcome to Night Vale books, and enjoyed them, you will love their third book. However, The Faceless Old Woman has an entirely different method of story telling than the previous WTNV books. It was a refreshing change and keep the story moving along. Mara Wilson does an excellent job as the narrator, Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor do an excellent job writing. Again, if you’re a fan of WTNV, I highly recommend it.

SO GOOD!

No spoilers, all I will say is this really hit every mark of a good story for me. It's a little ghost story-esque without being killer clown level terrifying or producing unnecessary anxiety if you (like me) already have enough problems not to go looking for more things to be scared of. It was DEEPLY entertaining- I didn't want to turn it off. The voice actor is soothing and yet so skilled and talented at performing the role. The story itself really made me think differently about life and what we prioritize. And the plot? I see double crosses coming from miles away- any Steven Universe fans... you know what I mean when I say I knew it the entire time. That said, this story really takes a double cross to new levels of treachery and you really FEEL the gut punches as they come. Wow. This is the perfect listen for a quarantine day or a beach vacation, whatever really when you just want to sit and listen to a fascinating, riveting tale about pirates, ghosts, and whatever the faceless old woman is. I feel I got the answer but the answer is exactly as complex and unclear as one would expect something like that to be if it were to happen. Poor Craig, though. Poor guy never stood a chance.

yet another amazing book and narration.

will go down as one of my favorites. capturing my attention to the end. The narrator was amazing. She read with emotion that really captured the feelings and emotions of the main character.