Book Review: Ghost House

What are your plans for Thanksgiving? Do you even celebrate it? I'm not a fan of Thanksgiving myself, but this year we are driving to see my brother and his kids. It's just a down and back trip so I'll be rested in time to shop till I drop on Friday.  

Just kidding, I'm mostly done, I just need stocking stuffers so that's going to take me a solid hour to do if I walk slow. 

Ghost House - Sara Connell

Ghost House is a short story collection where the madwomen are out of the attic and roaming the streets of Chicago, New York City and Prague. This series of "modern feminist ghost stories" explores the line between magic and reality and all the ways women can be haunted, and redeemed.

I honestly think this might be the only short story collection I've read this year.... usually I have a couple but this year I'm not sure that I've read any other. I'm a fan of short stories, sometimes I just don't have the mental capacity to engage in a whole story, so I need short and sweet. If you are a fan of spooky and witchy, this is going to be right up your alley. 

With excellent visual mastery and word play, author Sara Connell gives us a collection of spooky campfire stories of sorts. My biggest complaint is that with a title with "ghost" in it, I expected hauntings, at least some unsettling feelings that could be attributed to spirits or something. The foreword of the book gave the impression that the stories we were about to read were going to be adult versions of stories we made up during sleepovers with friends. Now, maybe I had weird friends, or maybe we were all watching too much cable TV but I distinctly remember being terrified at some sleepovers and none of these gave me the "this is kind of creepy" vibe.  We didn't totally get that, and it doesn't make the book any less fun to read, it just seems like perhaps a different title would have been more suitable? That's probably me getting very technically and nit-picky, but I don't feel well this week so that's where I'm at. 

I don't know why but I kept thinking this would be a good palette cleanser of a book for someone just finishing The Handmaid's Tale or something similar and are still on the feminist kick. I liked the author making comparisons on "all the ways women can be haunted", because some of the stories really hit that mark. I do think maybe two stories could be turned into whole books, the characters were fleshed out really well, the writing was smooth and easy to follow, and while they weren't what I would call horror, I was engaged in them anyways. Overall a good read, a solid 3 star for me. 

Thank you to Red Clover Digital and author Sara Connell for having me on this tour and providing a copy for review!