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 🌟
-
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.

I was happy when I started this one and it sucked me right in. Haunt Sweet Home is about a girl named Mara who takes a job working as a production assistant for a film crew that does a popular home renovation TV show with a cheesy paranmoral ghost hunter twist.

Mara's job ends up requiring her to secretly create scary sounds and effects at night to scare the people who are being featured in the show. It all seems pretty straight forward...until it's not and spooky stuff starts to actually go down.

This was a fun read. The writing was entertaining and was mystery with a side of silly, which I love. I wish it was a full novel! I haven't realized it was a short story until it abruptly ended and I wanted more.

3⭐️

This was a nice, quick read. Mara felt extremely believable burnt out 30+ year old trying to figure out how to get her shit together. I did enjoy how she went into this job offered by her cousin without asking any questions and then was so surprised about all it entailed. I liked that she was awkward and didn't make friends easily. Mara definitely got into her own way on multiple fronts and seemed to make everything she did harder than it needed to be. Even though this was a short novella, it didn't take long for things to get repetitive and I quickly got bored with the story. The ending also felt rushed after the repetitiveness as if there wasn't connection between where the story was and the end.

Thank you Netgalley and Tordotcom for providing this ARC to me!

Mara is a bit lost. She is not satisfied in her personal life, keeps trying and failing at committing to college, and feels practically invisible to her family. So when her cousin offers her an opportunity to work as an assistant on his popular haunted house renovation tv show, she decides to accept. After all, what does she have to lose? Mara soon finds herself as the person responsible for making the “hauntings” happen each night of filming, from producing mysterious fog in the forest to playing eerie sound recordings, all while trying to remain undetected. But as things on set become increasingly frightening beyond her own doing, Mara will have to question everything she knows.

I really enjoyed this weird little book! I really identified with Mara; I too am the youngest grandchild and always have felt out of place and in the margins around my extended family. My grandfather was also known for his carvings, just like Mara’s grandmother in the story. I loved the atmosphere built on the page for each of the “hauntings;” I could truly picture each scene in my mind (and would watch the heck out of a haunted house renovation show, by the way). While I did figure out most of the major twist early on, this did not detract from the story. I did find the ending to be a little underwhelming, but mostly it is the length that kept this from being a 5 star read for me. I feel that the storytelling would have been even stronger if it had been condensed into a short story or expanded into a longer novel; some aspects seemed repetitive while others went underdeveloped. Overall, this is a fun, fast, and spooky read perfect for the Halloween season.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

I snagged this one on NetGalley because the cover caught my eye and it sounded really good! It was an interesting but decent read. I enjoyed that it was short and I could read it in one sitting. The book is a little under 200 pages but is full of emotions and paranormal twists. I predicted the twist early on but I was curious of how it would all play out. I recommend i you want an interesting twist on a haunting!