When I started Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads, #1) the text came off as nonfiction sounding. My thought was, “Oh great. This whack-a-doo so-called “expert” is going to tell me all about a ghost named Rose Marshall and how she is real (and how ghosts are real) and all about her hauntings, and how hauntings happen, and probably throw in a conspiracy theory or two.”
Well, my apologizes, Seaman McGuire. You are not a whack-a-doo. But you are one messed up person! (And in a good way.) Your take on the ghost stories is new, and yet you have the traditional tropes, just not as expected. Possessed car? Check. But not of a long-lost love 70 odd years in the making. A killer of the road? Check. But not one as childish (which is a good thing, makes him eviler). And Rose? Well, the Prom Queen slash Hitchhiking woman I get, but the fact she died in the mid-west and now can find herself in California, Maine or even Florida? Yeah, didn’t see that coming.
It is a thriller/horror/ghost story with all the familiar stuff as well as this other. Maybe a bit mid-2000s modern, so a few things a little “off” for the mid-2020’s but still Rose is one bad-mother-trucker. And I like that she is a woman of the 1950s, but the years have given her a bit of a feminist kick. Oh, sometimes I was a little confused with some details; the “Um… okay so what is this, and why can it do that?” (SPOILER the dying road, Rose and the character Mary “kill” had me confused). And maybe poor Rose had a lot more adventures than one would think possible, but she is over 70 and a lot can be packed into one life, er… death.
I am not jumping up and down saying, “Best book ever.” But I am saying that if you are looking for a lighter horror/thriller read (yes, there is blood, violence, and some trigger issues such as car accidents, death, kidnapping, mentioning of casual sex, even ghost hunting), this might be what you are looking for. Extras at the end are included, that you could miss, but you might miss some fun and the definitions of some of the types of characters.
