HAUNT SWEET HOME by Sarah Pinsker – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker
Published by Tordotcom on September 3 2024
Genres: Adult, Paranormal
Pages: 176
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Light on scares but big on character growth and emotion, Haunt Sweet Home offers up interesting characters but is a disappointing ghost story.

Haunt Sweet Home is described as a “spooky ghost story,” but unfortunately, that description doesn’t fit the story at all. There isn’t a single scary moment in the book, which isn’t surprising because the set-up is a TV reality show that combines home renovation and haunted houses—and the hauntings are faked by the production crew. Instead, this is a thoughtful reflection on finding your passion in life and believing in yourself. If you go into it with your expectations checked at the door, you’ll find a sweet story about a twenty-something girl who yearns to be important to her family and is given the chance to become just that.

Mara can’t finish anything. She’s in her mid-twenties and hasn’t finished college. She’s dabbled in all sorts of things but nothing really sticks. This frustrating situation is made even worse because everyone in her big, boisterous family is ridiculously talented. Her grandmother is a well known artist, most of her aunts, uncles and cousins play musical instruments, and her cousin Jeremy is an actor. When Jeremy offers her a production assistant job on the popular TV reality show he hosts, Mara decides to take a chance on it. After all, she has nothing to lose at this point.

Haunt Sweet Home is a renovation show with a twist: the New England houses they renovate are all “haunted.” That is to say, the crew’s responsibility is to set up fake scares and make the homeowners believe that their house is haunted. As the new PA on the night shift, Mara is the one who has to lug the fog machine into place and make sure it goes off at just the right time; sneak around in the woods and make spooky “ghost” sounds; and even hide up in a tiny alcove in a home library and toss books onto the floor in the middle of the night.

As Mara figures out her new job and makes friends on the set, an unexpected encounter gives her the push she needs to start figuring out her future.

I do want to start this review by mentioning that there is indeed a ghost in the story, but it’s not the ghost you might be expecting. That’s all I’m going to say to avoid spoilers, and I did enjoy the scenes where Mara meets this ghost and the part they play in Mara’s eventual “coming of age.” Although that term isn’t quite right. Mara is too old to be the main character in a coming of age story, but that’s what it felt like.

I really enjoyed the scenes with Mara and her huge family, although they were a bit awkward since Mara feels invisible whenever she’s at family gatherings. But they are a quirky bunch, especially her Oma. Oma is a talented wood carver and has made each person in the family their own “throne” carved out of wood—except Mara, who unfortunately missed out because Oma stopped carving due to her arthritis.

Mara herself has a talent for carving wood, taught to her when she was a young girl by none other than Oma, and that talent comes into play when the show’s crew travels to a house with an apple orchard nearby. Mara finds a broken tree branch that speaks to her, and soon after the ghost I mentioned before enters the picture. Pinsker thoughtfully shows Mara’s growth as she works out some of her hang-ups—and she has a lot of them—by molding the branch into something special. This is really the heart of the story, and as stories go it worked well on an emotional level. But as a ghost story, it left something to be desired.

Which brings me to the TV show plotline. I was expecting a bunch of “fake haunting” shenanigans, meaning I expected there to be a lot of humor in the story. But I have to say I was disappointed in just about every aspect of the renovation/haunted house storyline. There’s not a lot of time spent on the homeowners’ reactions, so all the fake fog and dropped books just didn’t have an impact and came across as silly rather than eerie. Never once did anyone pick up a hammer or a floor sander and actually do any remodeling, which I thought was the whole point of the show. The focus of Haunt Sweet Home is Mara and her character growth, which is well done, but as I mentioned before, it wasn’t the story I was hoping for.

I did love the ending, though, which is upbeat and hopeful. Mara hits her stride and realizes she has a place in the world, even if that place is different than she expected. But I wanted more ghosts, more scares and more tension, which I didn’t get, hence my middle-of-the-road rating.

With thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.