A bit of a cozy paranormal/haunting story, if that is a thing. This is an enjoyable story that is easy to read. Some of the plot gets a bit confusing, but overall an enjoyable read.

This was delightful! Not the scariest ghost story you'll ever read but that's really not the point of HAUNT SWEET HOME. The haunted house home improvement show sounded like a ton of fun, and the intro of the ghost was excellent. In short: a very enjoyable, lightly spooky read!

I was lucky enough to receive the eARC and the ALC of this! So I was able to read this really quick. It's a novella so it's pretty short and I definitely recommend that you pick this up if you're trying to read novellas to increase your books read for the year. However... I felt like this was super slow. If I didn't have the ALC I don't know if I would have finished this. I didn't really vibe with the main character. I feel like she does have a lot that people can relate to... feeling like she's a burden, not doing anything with her life... but she just didn't have much in the way of personality. Even the narrator didn't bring much life to the character. The best part of the ALC were the bits of dialogue from the show and there were 4 narrators portraying the characters. Those bits were fun.

Basically the story is about Mara who isn't doing much with her life and she starts working as part of the crew on her uncle's tv show Haunting Sweet Home. They renovate houses and they turn out to be haunted... but they're not really haunted, the crew pretends it is for the show. While Mara is pretending to be a ghost she encounters some real paranormal activity. But there's more to it than that and you have to read it to find out.

Let's talk Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker. This book is a quick read sitting at 176 pages. You can catch this book on its release day, September 3rd.

I was grateful to have received an ARC of this book via Netgalley. I've been dying to read this one since I heard about it.

The book follows Mara who is in her late twenties and is still trying to figure out what she wants to do. She's tried college a few times but just hasn't had the desire to finish. When her cousin offers her a position on his reality tv show Haunt Sweet Home, she eventually agrees. The show follows new homeowners who believe their house is haunted.

Mara is hired on to help hide fog machines and improvise scares to terrify the new homeowners. But a creepy new coworker and a series of unnerving events on set force Mara to confront who she's really been deceiving and hiding from all along-herself.

This book is such a quick and easy read. It's not terrifying bu it does have a few spooky scenes. I absolutely had fun journeying onto the set of a reality tv show with the characters. I loved that the story featured scenes from the show itself in between some chapters.

I would describe this book as a cozy horror. It's fun but has spooky elements. It's a journey of finding your true self. Being who you want to be-not what everyone else thinks you should be.

A surprisingly deep and lightly haunted read.

If you're looking for an intro to horror or a lighter horror, this is a great place to start. Really enjoyed the author's prose and characters.

Would definitely read more by this author. Tysm for the ARC!

Genre: Contemporary speculative fiction, ghost story horror

Mara is more than a little aimless, thinking about another stint at a community college when her cousin offers her a job on the film crew where he is the star. After a couple of false starts, she lands the position as production assistant for the night crew. The show: a house hunters style show with a twist where all the properties are “haunted” and the show urges the couple to fix the house in order to make peace with the ghost. Mara's job: provide ghoulish and eerie hauntings, along with anything the crew asks for.

Haunt Sweet Home is a novella length light horror/speculative fiction book driven by the intensity of overnight shifts and manic high pressure life of a film set PA. The horror component is very light, so even most scaredy cat readers can get into this. At its core, the story has some lovely deep connections to soul and spirit and aiming to find direction in life while keeping overall tone light and fun with a bit of creepy atmosphere. It's set in Western MA primarily in a haunted house with an apple orchard, and if you know a New England morning or evening you know the fog can roll in to create that haunted feeling.

Sarah Pinsker gives us another solid speculative fiction book in her repertoire, and this one is perfect for a light haunting for fall.

This novella is short and sweet and combines two of my favorite things: behind the scenes reality TV and ghost stories.

Mara is a 20-something who's not sure what to do with her life. Her successful cousin - host of a home reno/ghost hunter reality show - sets her up with a lowly production assistant job on set. She's part of the night crew, the ones who craft the haunting storylines and pull off the practical effects. Because obviously not all these houses are haunted, right? ... Right? Because she soon realizes that there may be something truly otherworldly happening...

This isn't very scary in the traditional ghost story sense, but you get a great idea of what it feel slike to be an overlooked, unambitious person still looking for her calling, and perhaps finding it in an unlikely place.

This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novella.

This was a fun premise but should have been longer. I could have read hundreds of more pages. It wasn’t as frightening as I was expecting, but I did enjoy the main character and her quirky family. I loved the fabricated-reality show setting. I wanted a bit more depth and horror. Instead, it read like a fable. I would still continue to read this author, though! She writes beautifully.

I've read a few of Sarah's titles and really enjoyed them all so far. This one was a fun, fast, and quirky read about a twenty something named Mara who takes an entry level overnight production assistant job on her cousin's haunted house reality tv show.

Taking the position gives her full behind-the-scenes access to what's real and what's not on these types of ghost haunting spin offs, and helps her to continue to avoid the bigger decisions she's been putting off, like what to do with the rest of her life. Even Jo, the mysterious floater girl who starts shadowing Mara out of the blue, makes digs about her lack of direction and passion.

Mara takes an immediate liking to Jo until, on a long weekend from work, she invites her to tag along to a family get together and Jo fits in with her extended family better than she does. Is it her imagination or does Jo do everything just a little better than she can? And is she losing it or does Jo even LOOK a little like her?

While not heavy on the horror, its definitely got some fun paranormal and ghosty stuff going on. A little cheeky, a lot of heart, and a really enjoyable afternoon read! If it's not hit your radar yet, you really should check it out!

Mara wanders aimlessly through life, searching for meaning and a meaningful career. College doesn’t seem to be for her and jobs are just…meh. When her cousin, the charismatic host of a home renovation show featuring haunted houses, turns her on to a job as a production assistant on the show, Mara jumps at the chance to do something different. Mara soon learns that modern hauntings are not what they appear to be.

Though short, “Haunt Sweet Home” drags in parts of the story as Mara wanders through her night shift, into her days, and into her weekends. Her emotionally distant roommate on the production expects Mara to take off every weekend for camping. Then, Jo, a day production assistant, shows up to “help” Mara set up and execute “hauntings” at the homes they are filming. Jo gets a little mean and won’t leave even when Mara tells her she can complete the haunting stunts on her own. Throughout the story Mara is struggling to find her place in the world and continues to make missteps under pressure from Jo.

This book is labeled as Sci-Fi/Fantasy. It has the beginnings of a gothic feel (which is why I was interested in the story), but isn’t creepy.

This book is great for readers who like Sci-Fi/Fantasy, stories featuring behind the scenes looks at modern professions, and fans of Sarah Pinsker.

I received an advance review copy for free from NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

_Haunt Sweet Home_ by Sarah Pinsker was an absolute treat to read. Mara Billings, an indifferent college student who is drifting through life, takes a job on her cousin's reality show that combines haunted houses with home renovation. She doesn't seem to fit in with the crew any better than she did at college, until she meets Jo. Jo is kind to her and Mara impulsively invites her to join her family for the weekend, which leads to a falling out. That is when things get odd.

I greatly enjoyed this book, even though I figured out the "twist" well before it happened. The plot was well-supported and plausible, given the rules established in the story. It was a fun read, with actual character development and a satisfying ending. At just 176 pages, it was a quick read. Perfect to wiling away an afternoon.

3 🌟
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Haunt Sweet Home has a mix of paranormal, ghost, and faux elements.
A quick, easy, cozy spooky season read! You can easily read this book in three hours. It's very interesting to read. I like how the story is told in a reality TV style.
𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 Sept. 3

This book was more melodramatic than spooky. Even the haunting fell flat. It was too quick and still filled with the same self-pitying themes that permeated the entirety of the book. Overall, it was a great concept that didn't go as far as I'd like.

I would still be intrigued to read other books by this author but I wouldn't expect to be scared.

This one has left me feeling really confused and kind of floundering to describe what didn’t work for me. I was really excited for this one as I love HGTV shows, and the idea of a home renovation show about haunted houses sounds amazing. I love the cover and was initially interested in the set up of the show and our main character, Mara, who is in her 30s and trying to figure out her life and what she wants to do. I really enjoyed the family dynamics at play as we see how the rest of her family judges her and compares her to her more successful relatives. This felt like a good setup for a character to root for. But this ultimately just fell flat.

My biggest issue with this one is that I don’t really understand the haunting concept involved, and I really wish this had been longer so that aspect could have been more fleshed out. This was a novella, which I typically love, but for this to work, I really needed more detail and more of an investigation once the haunting came to light. This felt really rushed and almost like the haunting aspect was an afterthought to creating this fun tv show. And as someone who was here for the ghosts, I am left feeling a little bitter and disappointed.

Also even though this book was short, parts of this book felt slow, dragged out, and repetitive. I get the repetition to show the life of working on a production set, but it became quite tedious to read. And especially with other parts of the story that could have used more time, I left feeling quite frustrated with this one.

Pinsker is always great for her creative premises which are fully on display here. While I'm not always a fan of the novella, sometimes that's all that needs to be said in a story, and this is a perfect example of that.

2.5 stars. This novella put me in a reading slump. Mara was a sad character, not sad in the way she felt sad but that she came off as lazy and pathetic. The idea of working on a ghost haunting show and being actually haunted by a ghost herself was creative and interesting but the delivery fell flat. And I don't understand how Jo was not seen by the show crew but could be seen by Mara's family. Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC

This was a fun horror novella on the lighter side! It follows Mara, a drifting young woman who gets a job as a production assistant on the set of a haunted house reality show. She's not sure who she is or what she wants out of life, but she begins working the night shift, helping to scare the owners of these houses. But maybe the scares aren't all pretend after all...

Haunt Sweet Home feels like a story about the ennui of a quarter life crisis and the push and pull families have on us during that stage in life. But it's also an entertaining story about reality television. The audio narration is good. You get a performance of the main character that effuses her lack of interest in most things as the story begins and a dry sense of humor. I received an audio review copy via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

"On the set of a kitschy reality TV show, staged scares transform into unnerving reality in this spooky ghost story from multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker.

"Don't talk to day about what we do at night."

When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin's ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along - is herself.

Eerie and empathetic, Haunt Sweet Home is a multifaceted, supernatural exploration of finding your own way into adulthood, and into yourself."

It's always unnerving when the uncanny becomes reality.

I'm in my "I had fun. Five stars." era.

Haunt Sweet Home follows Mara, a down-on-her-luck twenty-something who's looking for a direction in life. Her famous cousin throws her a bone by giving her a space on his hyper-successful reality show Haunt Sweet Home, which combines the real-world shows Fixer Upper and Ghost Hunters. Though she's at the lowest position possible, Mara begins to enjoy her role - until she realizes the show's next haunting might be her.

Mara is a fun character. She's mopey and lost in a way I think a lot of people can relate to, but she's still young and plucky and fun at the same time. Her family history could have been fleshed out a little more I think, but her interactions with other characters are top-notch (especially her grumpy roommate). I would have loved to see her relationship with her grandmother a little more, because we get a lot of telling instead of showing there. But Oma gets her own fun scenes to explain her quirkiness, so she gets points for being adorable.

This story is almost entirely plot-driven and is really fast-paced. If you're looking for something with deep character development or strong themes, you won't find it here. But this has something that I think a lot of modern literature is missing - it's fun . I loved the ghost hunting show story and the reveal of the "twist" Did I see that twist coming a mile away? Yeah. But I liked the story anyway, and I think that counts for something.

If you want a quick, entertaining, and totally satisfying story, I definitely recommend this one be at the top of your TBR.

Sad to say this book wasn't for me. I remember reading Good Wives in college, so funny random memory. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.