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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.
"Fun, eerie, [and] unexpectedly beautiful ... [a] soft-horror tale of haunting that ultimately centers on a young girl just hoping to be appreciated for once." ―Booklist (starred review)
"Pinsker's evocative prose turns an amusing reality-show backdrop into a haunting story of hiding from (and discovering) oneself." ―Library Journal
"Nail[s] with a sharp satirical eye the portentous, kitschy narration, and false camaraderie of reality TV. ... [Mara's] sometimes-bumpy quest to discover herself as having both value and purpose, whether or not aided by uninvited supernatural forces, is consistently compelling." ―Locus
"Sarah Pinsker delivers yet again. Haunt Sweet Home cuts directly to the heart of a life that feels like it's haunted by the person living it. This one is fraught in all the right places." ―Sarah Gailey, bestselling author of Just Like Home
"Kind but not gentle, Pinsker cuts to the core of the lives we craft and those that are imposed on us, and how it feels to be both in the circle by the fire, and forever lurking in the shadowy woods beyond." ―Kathleen Jennings, author of Flyaway
"Pinsker pulls off the near-impossible feat of delivering a story that is simultaneously sweet and unnerving, reassuring and frightening." ―A.C. Wise, author of The Ghost Sequences
This information about Haunt Sweet Home was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Pinsker is the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K Dick Award winning author of A Song For A New Day, We Are Satellites, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, Lost Places, and over sixty works of short fiction. Her stories have appeared in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny, and in numerous anthologies and year's bests. She is also a singer/songwriter with four albums on various independent labels. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her wife and two weird dogs.
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