The Invisible World

by Nora Fussner

"An eerie and virtuosic debut" (Helen Phillips, author of The Need ) about a paranormal investigations TV show that loses control of its subject as they investigate a haunted house
 
Eve is a frustrated young artist and the owner of what she believes is a haunted house. Sandra is an overworked producer at Searching for . . . the Invisible World , a paranormal investigations show perpetually on the brink of cancelation.
 
When the show descends upon Eve's home, they’re intent on creating just another staged spectacle. But, unexpectedly, the crew encounters some very real activity—shelves collapse, electronics go haywire, a cameraman disappears in the dead of night. Meanwhile, the show’s teenage ghost hunter Caitlin is caught up in the unexplained events, convinced she’s glimpsing the “other side” and desperate to make contact—even if it means putting the investigation, and herself, in jeopardy.  

As the terror mounts, it's up to the show’s harried, skeptical producer, Sandra, to create order from the madness—or will the madness take her, too?

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Paranormal, Ghosts, Audiobook, Mystery, Supernatural

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 2023

Reviews

[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

With its intriguing premise, Gothic vibes, the behind-the-scenes look at reality television and the paranormal mystery The Invisible World by Nora Fussner is an interesting read.
As the novel begins, we follow the crew of a paranormal television show “Searching for . . . the Invisible World” to Ninebark, Pennsylvania, where they will be filming a part of their latest season. Aspiring artist Eve Hawthorne-Malone and her husband Ryan’s new home, which they suspect is haunted after a spate of eerie occurrences. Sandra, the producer of the show, has a predefined approach to filming and presenting the show- a fact that Eve is unaware of and thus is a tad disillusioned when her efforts to share her thoughts and past experiences, which she feels might be connected to present events aren’t met with the level of interest she had anticipated. Her husband Ryan also believes he can manipulate the creators of the show in his own way. What the producers, the crew and the investigators weren’t prepared for were strange occurrences they experienced while filming, including the disappearance of one of their own. The narrative follows these characters through the paranormal investigation behind the events.

The narrative is presented through transcripts of interviews of their hosts and details of the investigations conducted by Paranormal Investigators of Pennsylvania (PIP)- a ghost hunting operation with whom the production company collaborates including séance sessions with a local psychic- throughout spanning five days and nights the crew spent onsite. The author seamlessly weaves several sub-plots into the narrative and draws you in and keeps you invested in the plot as it is gradually unraveled. Eve’s personal journey is deeply embedded into the narrative of the plot. There are several characters to keep track of and a lot of drama going on behind the scenes.

There is a lot to like about this debut novel. The narrative does suffer from minor repetition, but that does detract from the overall reading experience. However, I found it difficult to connect with any of the main characters and the personal drama often overshadowed the paranormal mystery at the core of this novel. I also felt that certain aspects of the plot were left unexplained, resulting in a somewhat ambiguous ending.

Many thanks to Vintage Anchor for the digital review copy via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. The Invisible World was published on September 26, 2023.

Connect with me! ✏ Instagram ✏ My Blog ✏ The StoryGraph

[Tracey Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who grew up on Ghostwatch, The Blair Witch Project, and the UK TV show Most Haunted, novels about ghost-hunting TV shows are my absolute jam. The Invisible World is a somewhat familiar story, with some uncanny surprises, and I loved it.

After leaving New York, and her dreams of being an artist, Eve is living a frustrating small-town life with her husband. After a few weird experiences in her home, she decides to contact a ghost-hunting TV crew. However, when it becomes clear the TV crew already has a narrative in mind, Eve attempts to take some power back, and reveals some weird things from her past. And then when a member of the crew goes missing, things get really spooky.

There are some incredibly unsettling moments in this story. It always makes me smile when I have to re-read a sentence or passage because I can’t quite wrap my head around what I’ve just read. This occurs a few times in The Invisible World, most notably Eve’s final, chilling interview with the TV crew.

Another thing that really impressed me was how quickly and effectively characters were established. It can be easy to dismiss a TV crew as one, egotistical entity, but individuals were really fleshed out. Sandra, the put-upon de facto leader, has an interesting narrative journey; I really enjoyed getting to know her.

The Invisible World is a spooky, weird, and engaging novel. Like all good ghost stories, it does not offer any definitive answers, which makes the strange moments even more terrifying. Highly recommended to lovers of the supernatural.

Comps:

- Priya Sharma short story, The Show (https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fi...)
- Episode Thirteen, Craig DiLouie

[Alyson Larrabee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Invisible World starts out like the best horror novels, with a slow build, nothing much supernatural happening. Eve, a young wife and artist is living in an old farmhouse in a small town in Pennsylvania. When she and her husband were sleeping, a couple of paintings fell off of the wall. Hmmmm. They weren’t nailed up properly but maybe a supernatural force caused them to move. Who you gonna call? She calls a reality show called Searching for the Invisible World, and ends up being chosen for an episode. The crew arrives in the somewhat rural village of Ninebark. The real drama begins as each of their personalities is revealed. Most of the characters have some supernatural experience baggage that they’ve been dragging around. As unexplainable events occur and escalate Eve finds out that the show is scripted and they’re not equipped (literally or emotionally and psychologically) to cope with and record these events. Their shows always follow a script and the editors work the real magic after a few scenes have been recorded. A lot of the characters are in denial about their own past experiences with ghosts or psychic phenomena and they’re determined to remain in the dark. Five stars for this remarkable, complex, character driven story. Another good one to help you get in the mood for Halloween.

[Melissa Brodbeck · Rating 1 out of 5]

The reviews were better written than this book.

Ever so mildly entertaining but based on the reviewsI read which led me to purchase the book, mostly disappointing. Unorganized text, hard to follow snippets of story time and overall dull and flat.

[Milt Theo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay this wonderful book is that it reminded me of Paul Tremblay's 'A Head Full of Ghosts,' a somewhat same-themed novel, which I consider a masterpiece of slow-burn horror that's a page-turner at the same time. And, indeed, up to the last third, Nora Fussner's 'The Invisible World' does share a lot of Tremblay's writing style in that book (interview transcripts, footage descriptions, etc.), as well as the ambiguity and the interiority characterizing his novel. However, once I reached the last third of 'The Invisible World,' I realized that Nora Flussner's book was going to be something entirely different, an original and unique work with its own, distinctive voice, and a far more intense ending. I was not disappointed. In fact, Flussner's book may be among the top three 2023 horror books I've read so far.

Center-stage is a paranormal TV show, arriving at a supposedly haunted house for their new episode, Along comes a group of ghosthunters, employed by the TV producer, meant to investigate the supposed haunting and get some nice moments of the supernatural on camera - or, at least some hints of it given in post-editing narration. The owners of the house, a young couple with their own problems and frustrations, get slowly mixed up in the TV show politics, not realizing that such shows are not after truth but merely good performance. The realism with which Fussner describes the conflicts of TV crew and producer, the clashes between producer and director, the internal dilemmas of the couple, and, most of all, the craving of the ghosthunters themselves for the supernatural is incredibly well-done, utterly convincing, and may very well be the first time this kind of realistic portrayal appears in the horror genre.

The haunted house story in the book is intricate, somewhat obscure but quite unsettling, nothing gory but disturbing mentally and emotionally. A lot of the 'paranormal' experiences described sound like someone really lived them; the subtleties involved are handled with great respect and thoughtfulness, and the author has done the work necessary to show the supernatural elements in a veridical light, without ridicule or melodrama. I consider this a definite achievement.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early digital copy of the book and a chance to review it.

[Sam Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

AHHHHHH! ONE OF MY MOST ANTICIPATED READS OF 2023 JUST ROCKED MY WORLD.

Yall KNOW I love a haunted house horror book, and this scratched my neverending itch in a very dramatic and Stephen King-like way. **Cough, Cough the cancelled show Castle Rock came to my mind so many times. Cough Cough**

Eve and Ryan's home is haunted and a Ghost Hunting Reality TV show is coming to get the whole thing on tape for hundreds of thousands of viewers. But it's actually deeper than that... Eve has been having odd time slip/continuity errors her entire life, for example, that one time her and her grandparents ventured out to the beach, and decided to pull off onto the side of the road to rest and woke up 4 days later -- with her other family members panicked and amber alerts set. So, yeah. Weird.

What this crew ends up finding stumps the knowledge of seasoned psychics, paranormal experts, and cameramen altogether, for there's something more sinister at play than just a friendly neighborhood haunting...

The Invisible World is projected to hit shelves on September 26, 2023, and I'm so thankful to Vintage/Anchor Books, Nora Fussner, and Netgalley for granting me advanced digital access to such a haunting gem.

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like paranormal reality shows like 'Ghost Adventures' so the premise of this book intrigued me and it didn't disappoint. I like how the ending isn't typical and leaves you questioning, which I think works for a book with this premise. I like the writing style and I think it's unique. There are creepy moments which I enjoyed. Overall, if the storyline interests you, I'd recommend you give it a shot. Special Thank You to Nora Fussner, Vintage Anchor and NetGalley for allowing me to read a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Jaksen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of jumbly, IMO. Take a lot of supernatural/paranormal tropes and throw them in an empty box, shake repeatedly and roll them out like dice and there it is!

We have a possible poltergeist, a few characters who are hauling around 'inexplicable' experiences from their past, then a skeptic, and an ardent believer. Oh, don't forget the medium, the pictures which fall off the walls and then the objects which get thrown around. (The throwing around happens a lot.) We've got a bit of sex in there, too, and an assortment of personalities - so many it's hard to keep track of them!

This is all set against a television crew from a program which specializes in the paranormal, more specifically, haunted houses. Everyone from this group - and the owners of the house, a young man and woman - have issues about the paranormal, supernatural, inexplicable, and so on. (As in Every. Single. One.) As a result, there is much much - too much! - head-hopping. I'd get interested in the dynamic between two or three characters and bango! - we're off in a different direction.

However, what I did like was when 'something happens' and no one notices until - 'creepy music plays' - someone 'thinks' about it later. Such as...



When, during a car ride, one of the people riding up front is in conversation with 'someone' in the back seat. Suddenly the guy in the front seat realizes the one in the back seat is answering his questions without moving his mouth. Okay. Normal, in this kind of situation? Mebbe.



However, and despite my criticism, not a bad read.

Four stars.

[Darcia Helle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, this was a miss for me.

The story started out well enough. I was definitely intrigued by the happenings inside the house. I wanted to know what Eve was hiding and what kind of paranormal craziness we'd find inside.

Then we quickly veer off into the reality TV show's cast, separate paranormal investigators, and a LARGE cast of characters, all seemingly with their own private agendas (and personal drama!). I struggled to keep up with all the names, job titles, and relationships.

Honestly, I found I didn't even care. None of these characters were likable, including our main couple.

We don't get closure at the end. We're left with questions, which I suppose was intended to mimic this sort of reality TV show, but I wasn't a fan.

*Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.*

[Marieke Brouwer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't know why I even finished this book. I hated it, I hated the characters, and the writing was bad.

[Shanereads · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Invisible World was an interesting book, it might be a good book to pass the time on a plane or other travel. However, I just didn't particularly connect to it.

The Invisible World is about a C list reality tv program that goes to peoples homes to film paranormal activity. I have personally never enjoyed watching this type of tv. The story follows the lives of the production crew and couple as they are filming the interviews for the tv show. Because of this it very much reads like the type of tv show it is based off of. I did enjoy reading the interviews that were written in the book. However, I struggled through finishing. I would not hand sell this title.

This finished copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

[Sabrina Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not much I can say about this one without spoilers but I really enjoyed it! This book was a lot of fun. I loved the set up of the show and the progression we saw from all the characters. The multi perspective narrative really worked here and the look in to all the characters lives was really interesting. Overall a great debut from Nora Fussner and I'm excited to read what they write next.

[chels marieantoinette · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just couldn’t get into this book for some reason. I liked the premise of the haunted house and paranormal TV series, but I felt like that action was minimal and the characters weren’t engaging at all. I didn’t understand why Sandra immediately disliked Eve and a lot of the crew ran together for me. Maybe it’d work better for someone SUPER into paranormal TV shows- I like them, but I’m not like a super fan and I just didn’t feel that into this book.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A layered narrative with so much going on - a deep dive into what can be explained and what can't, in one particular paranormal encounter over the course of several days. I found the characters to be intensely interesting because they were all flawed to one extent or another. Those flaws get magnified in challenging ways, and I just love the way that the author just lets it all run its course, getting weirder and weirder as it goes. I will be thinking about this one for a while.

[Kristy Johnston · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story had what sounded like an interesting premise, but I found the execution rather dry and incoherent. The narrative is broken up with trancripts for the paranormal TV show. I usually enjoy this type of format, but it often confused me and threw me out of the story.

There were a lot of characters, and I never got a good feel for them. I didn’t feel like there was much room for character depth or motivations. It just seemed like a bunch of random events strung together with little purpose or resolution. I was disappointed in a few dropped subplots and ultimately, it just never pulled me in.

Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage Books for a copy provided for an honest review.

[Debbie Viscosi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shows on hauntings and ghosts are popular reality TV. Hoping to cash in on this popularity is a social media influencer, Eve Hawthorne, and her husband, Ryan. The Hawthornes have sunk their savings into an older house that seemed interesting. They began experiencing unusual occurrences and decided to contact a ghost-hunting reality show. As the show begins developing the story, it becomes apparent that this story revolves around Eve. She seems to be working very hard to have the publicity appearing on the show will bring. Has Eve created these odd occurrences or is there an entity trapped in their house?

Nora Fussner exposes the monetization of reality television combined with the artificial world of social media influencers. The characters are well-crafted and relatable. The portrayal of reality TV shows as scripted is not a new notion but the author takes this idea in interesting directions. There are some surprises along the way, and the book is an easy story to read that will keep your attention.

[Andrea Rittschof · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Invisible World” by Nora Fussner is what paranormal should be, vivid and spooky as it explores the reality of paranormal investigation shows and how your point of view determines your belief. The novel immediately pulls you into the world of the tv show, heightening the feel of the reality show with interspersing the events of around the characters with interviews and what shows on the film that the show captures. The use of multiple characters helps increase the pace of the book and the tension as the reader has to determine what is real and what is not. 

Especially as the reader interacts with Eve, you soon realize that more is going on than is expected. Is the activity in the house paranormal or is it created by Eve? Are psychic talents at play?  But as we encounter Caitlin, Sandra and the other characters, the questions arise about the reality of the events and the terror increases. I love the way that perceptions and the truth are questioned in a vivid and compelling way. The resolution of the story gives the reader some answers to the questions raised by the story. 

One aspect that didn’t work for me as well was that because there were so many different point of view characters, I did struggle to connect to the characters. For me, I prefer to have a tighter point of view and this was third person which limited how much emotional content the reader encounters. The story is still vivid and spooky. And the exploration of the paranormal in the context of a reality show is brilliant.

If you like vivid and spooky, I would recommend trying out “The Invisible World.” I especially suggest it if you are interested in the paranormal or ghost investigation shows. It explores those aspects brilliantly and the different point of views adds to the illustration that each character actually experiences something different, just like real life. The resolution is thoughtful and compelling. Overall, this is a very different book about the paranormal and the kid in me who loved ghost stories loved this book.

[Dawn-Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy haunted house books and combining that with reality tv made this my kind of book. I liked the way a lot of this story was told as interviews with various characters. And the haunting that was happening was intriguing. But ultimately this novel was a bit flat. It's not scary or spooky enough to be considered horror - more like domestic drama with some spirits thrown in. And the build-up of the haunting and its explanation goes nowhere. I suppose it's a paranormal reality tv ending where nothing is really solved and you can make up your own mind, but that was disappointing.

[Karelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Juste vraiment vague et qui laisse ben trop de loose ends.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eve and Ryan think their house is wonderful until it's not- until weird things begin to happen and prompt Eve to remember oddities from her life. So (of course) they reach out to a ghost busters sort of tv reality show. This is told from multiple perspectives, including members of the crew as the tv people investigate. To be honest, it's less a tale of the paranormal than it is about the "reality" tv business and relationships. That said, it's a well written debut with some insightful commentary. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

[Olivia Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

I took this book on vacation and ended up leaving it on a shelf of our rental house. If you find yourself browsing the library in a villa in a remote Tuscan mountain town, you may spot this book….skip it 💜

Recommendation for similar vibes with strong writing and intriguing characters: Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie

[Breanna Stanton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked up this one without reading any reviews. Bad idea on my part. Very jumbled up , inconsistent, and the ending just made my head hurt. Not for me.

[Chris Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading a string of paint-by-numbers horror duds, how refreshing to stumble upon a terrific slow burn like The Invisible World. The plot, about a film crew for a television show about ghost huntings investigating an allegedly haunted house, will draw some comparisons to Paul Tremblay's Head Full of Ghosts, but this is very much its own thing. There's a great deal of ambiguity, along with some surprising turns that forced me to re-read paragraphs, that opens the novel and its ending up to multiple interpretations. That might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I've been enjoying mulling this one over.

[Katey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book actually disappointed me.

I picked this book up randomly. I thought it might be a change of pace from my normal horror/psych thriller books, as it as more of a paranormal undertone I do not normally pick up.

The idea for this book is amazing, execution? Not so much for me... I constantly got characters confused, not knowing whose perspective I was reading, or what characters were talking. I had to keep doubling back to see if I missed something.

Overall, it did keep my interest, but I was disappointed.

[Nicole (Nerdish.Maddog) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good debut for Nora Fussner, she has built up an atmosphere of suspense that is on par with some of the current masters of the horror/thriller genre. This book follows a found footage format that makes you feel like you are behind the scenes on a reality TV show. The Invisible world is a paranormal investigation show, like ghost hunters, they go into everyday America’s homes and try to capture the unseen. The show is called out to go a quick half episode with Eve and Ryan, who say they are being haunted by an unknown entity in a house that has no history with death. On the first night of shooting something unexplained happens, and a camera man goes missing. In hopes of capturing more of the paranormal experience on camera, the crew stays on for a few more nights of filming. What unfolds in the pages is both creepy and believable. Each night of filming will draw you deeper and deeper into the mystery of the invisible world. The characters are both frustratingly annoying and deeply moving so you almost get the feeling that you are actually reading found footage transcripts involving real people. There is more depth to this story than “things that go bump in the night”.

Thanks to the KDPG bookstagram program for an ARC of this book. Thanks to Vintage & Anchor for publishing this book and Nora Fussner for taking the time to bring this book to life. You can purchase a copy of this book at your local independent bookstore.

[Theresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley...this was an interesting story. I liked the plot - the behind the scenes of a paranormal investigation TV show that (unexpectedly for the crew) stumbles into things they cannot explain. There were definitely some super creepy elements that I loved...but I was also kind of confused by other parts. I think that was intentional - to mirror the confusion of those in the house having different experiences and questioning whether or not what they believed was real or not. Personally, I would have loved to know if Eve was really behind everything (no, I don't think so?) and what happened to Ronnie (and why no one reacted strangely to his return?). Definitely left me with questions - but I do like that I'm still thinking about this and trying to work all the details out after having finished (just like the characters!).

[Emily Migliazzo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Uneven and aimless. I’m frustrated that I put in the time to read this. I kept thinking something would happen or a theme would emerge or something besides the plot would connect the many characters.

“…the mythology of their coupledom…”(14).

“…he primarily oversaw the installation of subwoofers into muscle cars—shiny red (now throbbing) proxy genitals he manipulated without a hint of irony”(18).

[Paula · Rating 1 out of 5]

No.

[Jeanne Norberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nora Fussner is an author whose writing is as exceptional as her perceptive ability to see the world. After I finished this book, I went back through to highlight the jewels of expression that are sprinkled on every other page.

The Invisible World of Fussner's creation is not quite what you might have assumed. This is not horror at all. It's sophisticated. Thoughtful. As the NYT says, “The Invisible World” invites readers to consider a more human proposition: What happens when a woman is dismissed — and what power may be unleashed when she is finally believed?

Here is the full review:
Ghost stories often start with a bump in the night, a figure in a mirror, a disembodied voice whispering from the void. But Nora Fussner’s thought-provoking debut novel, “The Invisible World,” opens with a different kind of bang: the slam of a van door as the crew of a struggling supernatural reality show pulls up to a farmhouse to shoot their newest episode.
The team behind “Searching for … the Invisible World” are a bunch of big-city skeptics brimming with their assumed superiority over the small-town families whose lives they package each week into neat 42-minute segments. They’ve done this so many times that when they arrive at the farmhouse, they present the owners, Ryan and Eve Hawthorne, with a helpful manual titled “What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Reality Show to Descend on Your Home.” The crew is utterly unfazed by any of the poltergeists that the show purports to expose because they know the dirty little secret of reality television: Every episode is scripted before a single camera starts to roll.
The book itself is structured like a shooting schedule, with transcripts of interviews sprinkled throughout the narrative. It does not take long before things veer off script.


Fussner populates her novel with a broad cast of colorful characters, so many it can be hard to keep track of everyone. But at its heart are three women: Sandra, the show’s overworked producer; Caitlin, an enthusiastic teenage ghost hunter; and Eve, an artist haunted by a childhood experience she’s never been able to explain. The aftershocks of that experience have shaped her life ever since. On her second date with Ryan, when she realizes she wants to spend her life with him, she decides to trust him with her story — one she has never shared with another soul.

But Ryan is a skeptic, chalking Eve’s tale up to the haziness of a child’s memory or her brain working to suppress some horrible trauma she doesn’t want to see. He is similarly dubious of her present experiences in their home, where Eve confronts picture frames that won’t stay on the walls, electrical outlets that spark and light her easel on fire and a vision in the bathroom mirror of a bedraggled woman standing behind her.
These persistent denials from her partner erode Eve’s ability to trust her own senses. “She hadn’t understood the weight of Ryan’s power,” Fussner writes, “the power to confirm or deny her reality.”

Eve hopes that the television show will finally allow her to tell her story on her own terms. But rather than receiving support from the “Searching For …” crew, she finds herself once again being pressured into disbelieving her own experiences in order to fit a narrative somebody else finds tidier, more comfortable. It’s a position that any woman who has ever been dismissed as silly, paranoid or — most insidious of all — hysterical will find familiar.
As Eve grows more frustrated, the otherworldly phenomena grow more and more undeniable. Crew members start disappearing, others witness the apparitions for themselves, and even skeptics like Ryan and Sandra find it hard to rationalize away what’s happening.

But Fussner’s haunted house turns out to be a bit of a Trojan horse, carrying deeper questions about how narratives are controlled, and how much the “real” version of events depends on who is doing the framing. Yes, there are plenty of thrills, but readers are more likely to be kept up at night because they can’t put the story down than because of any truly terrifying scares. More than anything, “The Invisible World” invites readers to consider a more human proposition: What happens when a woman is dismissed — and what power may be unleashed when she is finally believed?

THE INVISIBLE WORLD | By Nora Fussner | 307 pp. | Vintage Books | Paperback | $17

Jennifer Harlan is a staff editor for special projects and a co-author of the books “Finish the Fight!: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote” and “Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter.” More about Jennifer Harlan

[Reading Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know, I give this book props for trying to do something really innovative with horror and I liked that quite a bit. The unexplained happenings means the reader is the one who applies meaning to all of it, which is a theme of the book (that we believe or not believe and that creates our worldview).

And I also really loved the format--first, I, like many other readers, and doubtless Fussner herself, was a huge fan of the ghostie shows back in the day. Even when we knew it was all fake, we loved suspending that disbelief to watch Jason and Grant and the crew have spooky times. It was really the evolution of Fox Mulder's "I want to believe" poster. Most of us want to believe but in a safe, sanity-safeguarding way--that creepy stuff is out there but there's a big glass screen between us and it, that it's happening to someone else and it makes us feel just a bit more snug and secure in our own very much not haunted houses.

Fun fact: I grew up in a legit haunted house--it was in all the local ghost tour books. And it's not as scary or as fun as you think. Sure, every once in a while it's fun to have the furnace repairman come running up the stairs because something touched him and it was quite comforting to see my girl cat after she passed away, napping on her favorite windowsill. And finding jewelry where it should not have been (my mother lost a jade pendant and found it almost a year later..in an oven mitt. The oven mitt she used almost every day). So I don't just 'want to believe' I kinda do.

But in this book, that squares me with Eve who is absolutely an unpleasant human. I honestly don't get her marriage. And that's actually one of the flaws of this book--I get it she's artistically blocked and all but that's just another edge to her absolute narcissism. All the characters are pretty one-note, but if you think about how many characters there are in the story, there's not really much room for development. It seems by the end the story's really about Sandra but...yeah I didn't really see that.

The other issue is the creepy stuff just...isn't that creepy. It's not that I'm jaded because I read so much horror and nothing freaks me out or anything. Quite the opposite--I read horror and I am primed to be spooked. Like just start me down that path and I start rolling on my own momentum.

She's not great at writing spooky stuff. It's almost like she's embarrassed to buy into it enough to let herself really do it? Like I remember when I first wrote fanfiction I felt super cringey because it was so...awkward and I didn't want to really commit to it. I get that vibe here.

So it's an interesting read and I look forward to her later novels where hopefully she will work a bit more on consistent character arc (instead of plot arc) and really lean into mood.