Mara Billings is the resentful butt of a lot of family jokes. Where her relatives have found spouses, jobs, and even a bit of fame (in the case of her cousin Jeremy), Mara has dropped out of college more than once and has no idea what she wants to do with her life. In Haunt Sweet Home, Sarah Pinsker’s unusual coming-of-age story, Mara finally gets an opportunity to come into her own, albeit on the set of a cheap reality TV show about haunted houses.
Jeremy is the host of Haunt Sweet Home, a reality show featuring homeowners who purchase older fixer-uppers that are below market because they “might” be haunted. If they aren’t obviously haunted (they’re not), the night crew of the show does a naughty round of effects that make the owners think that something supernatural is going on. Jeremy offers Mara a job as a production assistant for the night crew at a low moment in her life and she surprises herself by taking the job. And it turns out that Mara has a talent for spooky effects that scare the willies out of the new residents.
I enjoyed reading a book that walked the boundary between definitely not haunted and actually there might be something here. After Mara helps haunt her first house—a Massachusetts farmhouse with an overgrown, century-old apple orchard and even a cemetery nearby—unexplainable things start to happen. I don’t want to give away too much of what happens because it was a lot of fun to see if my theories about what was going on were correct (they were) and I don’t want to ruin that for other readers. I hope it suffices to say that Mara’s delayed coming-of-age was deeply satisfying because Mara just can’t walk the same path as others. I think a lot of us can relate, even if our own emergence into adulthood probably didn’t involve ghostly libraries or the vengeful spirits of cows.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
