Audiobook Review – Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Stories, Book 1) by Seanan McGuire (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 11 hours and 18 minutes (320 pages)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Release Date: May 6, 2014
ASIN: B00JVU2U80
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Ghost Stories series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

I bought a copy of this book through Audible to read. I have pretty much adored everything I have ever read by Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant, so I was very excited to read this book. This was a very good read, although I think one of the weaker books McGuire has written.

The audiobook was very well done. The narrator did an excellent job with different character voices and conveyed emotion well. This is a book that I would recommend listening to on audiobook if you are into audiobooks.

This is a well done book about Rose Marshall, she is a famous hitchhiking ghost. The book ambles back and forth throughout time following various stories and adventures in the 60 years since Rose has been dead.

I did look online and this “book” was originally released as a series of twelve individual stories in The Edge of Propinquity over a time period of twelve months (one story per month). Unfortunately you can kind of tell, the book doesn’t flow like a book and there is a lot of repetition from story to story.

Despite all of the wandering there is a point to the story; Rose was driven off the road by a man named Bobby Cross. Bobby Cross has been haunting the highways and sacrificing people he kills on the road for eternal life. Rose has decided that enough is enough and starts to seek out a way to stop Bobby Cross.

I really enjoyed all the ghost mythology and urban legends throughout. I loved reading about the different types of ghosts. Rose is an interesting character and she was fun to read about. Rose is an interesting blend of innocence and experience; she is sixteen years old but in the last 50 years she has experienced all sort of things no sixteen year old should ever have to experience.

If Rose is offered a jacket/coat and puts it on she can become human. This makes for a number of interesting implications. When she is wearing an gifted jacket she can eat, she can feel people, and she can interact just like a human. You can imagine what a lot of the guys who pick her up want in payment for giving her a ride, this is never really gone into in detail but it is definitely discussed. So this “gift” of being able to be human for a time is both a gift and a curse.

I did have a couple problems with this collection of stories as a book. It ambles around…a lot. It’s a very wandering story and (while this may accurately portray the life of a ghost) there were times when I wondered if we were ever going to get to the point or the story. This is less of an issue if you approach this as a collection of stories and not as a novel.

The second problem I had is that the story gets very very repetitive. This is probably because this was originally released as separate stories, but Rose repeats herself a lot at the beginning of each part in the book. She explains what the different smells (ashes, lilies, honeysuckle) mean to her over and over. I got a bit tired of the repetition.

Overall though, I did enjoy the world and the story. There is some small tie-in with the Price family from the InCryptid series as well. I would definitely recommend to those who enjoy urban fantasy. This was a creatively done story that was very engaging…if a bit repetitive and wandering at times.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Audio Book Reading Challenge
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge