Audiobook Review – What Walks These Halls by Amy Clarkin, Narrated by Róisín Rankin (2/5 stars)
Reading Level:Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Length: 11 Hours, 1 Minutes
Publisher: Bolinda Audio
Release Date: April 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781038670410
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Audiobook from NetGalley for Review
Rating: 2/5 stars
“Raven O’Sullivan doesn’t remember what happened in Hyacinth House five years ago. When her father died during a paranormal investigation there, everyone said it was an accident, but she’s pretty certain it’s her fault.
Her brother, Archer, wasn’t there that night. When asked to investigate the supposed ghost of Hyacinth House, he can’t resist saying yes. Even if his sister wants nothing to do with it.
Éabha McLoughlin has grown up seeing and hearing things no one else does. Now that she’s starting college, she finally has the freedom to find out why. The daring Archer and his eclectic team seem like a good place to start.
But everyone has their secrets, and they all lead back to Hyacinth House …”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on audiobook through NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: This was a fairly typical haunted house type of story. I wasn’t a huge fan of it. My main complaint is that this focused a lot more on the characters and their issues than it did on the haunted house and ghost itself. There is a lot of the characters angsting about their decisions, their past actions, etc, etc. I found the resolution and reveal around the haunted house to be disappointing.
The book changes POV willy nilly. I had to backtrack at times to figure out whose POV I was listening to at a given moment. This is confusing and breaks the story up.
This did remind me a bit of Stroud’s “Lockwood and Co” series because of the way a group of misfits band together to hunt ghosts. However, it only reminded me a bit of that. This book is set in modern times, doesn’t have very good world-building, doesn’t have the ghosts and hauntings in such frequent gory detail, and the characters aren’t nearly as entertaining as they were in “Lockwood and Co”.
I listened to this on audiobook and it was okay. The narrator confuses voices at times and the characters’ voices are not very distinct from each other.
My Summary (2/5): Overall, while I finished this, there were quite a few times where I almost didn’t because I was just bored by it. I didn’t have another audiobook to listen to at the time so I thought I might as well keep listening. In the end I probably should have just stopped listening, this was predictable, anti-climatic and a bit boring all the way through. I found the end disappointing. I don’t plan on picking up another novel by this author
