dry bones

I found this book to repetetitive and it did nothing to keep me wanting to keep picking it up to read,

Stewart

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Haunted House Story

Good storytelling. I was invested in the story till the end. Not the most likeable characters (or the most bright either). The narrator's performance was excellent.

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Spooky!!

If you like spooky then this is the book for you! The atmosphere is slowly built up in an amazing way. The story really pulls you in, although I didn't find the husband very likeable! The twists in the book keep you wanting to read more, hence why I listened to the whole thing over the space of one weekend, I was listening at every given opportunity to find out what would happen next. The narrator is excellent and I found his voice really easy to listen to with enough of a change for me to be able to differentiate between different characters. Although I enjoyed reading Kim's side of the story rather than Julian's,maybe that was because I felt more pulled to Kim and found her more likeable than her husband,who came across as bit of a know-it-all,but I feel that's what the author intended. The ending was good, maybe not quite what I thought it would be, but in keeping with the rest of the book,which was great. Love the scares and jumps that appear,although my husband doesn't like me shouting at when I get scared! I think this book will make me interested to listen and read other books by Ambrose Ibsen. I am glad I listened to this book, definitely makes me want to explore this author further,and I will also be looking at other books narrated by Joe Hempel to listen to.
Please read/listen to this book, but not alone, and not in the dark if you are as much a scaredy cat as me!
This review copy audiobook was provided by the author/narrator/publisher free of charge via Audiobook Boom.

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Brilliant audible book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this audible book; it is scary! so be warned! great story and great performance! enjoy!

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1 person found this helpful

Not for me

Sorry to say, I found this to be quite difficult to listen to. The story premise was great, but I am not entirely certain if it was the story, the narration or a combination of the two.

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Creepy

This is a haunted house story. A young couple buy a rural house which stands close to a dark forest. Creepy events start happening and the story goes from there. It did come to a reasonable conclusion. I did find there was a lot of repetition in this collection, but I'm assuming this is because this audiobook is an omnibus of each of the single books in the series, therefore the author would have been recapping the plot for previous books. I thought the narrator and production were both good. Well worth a listen.

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Genuinely scary

I thought this book was really good! Great premise, well written, well narrated, all in all a good listen!
I thought it was genuinely creepy and at times I was on the edge of my seat with nerves!
Not far off a 5star rating all.
I felt some of the use of formal English words (almost olde-english) felt a little out of place in a modern story sometimes and I couldn’t really figure out Julian’s character especially nearer the end (why did he do that!?).
Joe read the story really well, with good character voices and was able to create great suspense when required.
This is my unbiased and honest opinion of a free review copy.

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Interesting and spooky, but characters a bit odd

I quite like stories about spooky locations and concealed secrets and, in that respect, this book doesn't disappoint. It tells of a young married couple who move from 'the city' (I don't remember whether the specific location is mentioned) to an old creepy house in the middle of nowhere. Their relationship disintegrates as the house's weird secrets come to life. The dark secret is, in the end, very peculiar, but I won't give it away.

What spoiled this book a little for me was that I really can't imagine real people behaving as the characters in this story do. There's a lot of complexity in a marriage, particularly in times of stress, and none of this is captured at all. The characters sometimes do and say things that contradict what they did or said earlier and, while real people do this, there's usually some reason for it. In this story, the characters' behaviour seems somewhat random. Shirley Jackson's Hill House is a good example of how to write people who are falling apart in a creepy house, and something that I think all writers in this genre ought to aspire to. Sadly, this book falls short.

Still, it's not a bad book, and it entertained me for a while. I've read worse.

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2 people found this helpful

brilliant

I really struggled to stop listening to this it had me on the edge of my seat and routing for kate all the way through the naration was great too

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Stephen King doesn’t scare me... but this sure did

Wow. What can I say?

I had never heard of Ambrose Ibsen before I stumbled upon this hidden gem.

This story gripped me from the beginning and as much as I didn’t want to stop listening, I had to at times as I was truly struck down with fear.

I really didn’t know which way the story was going to go and the ending did in fact surprise me. I often guess the endings of novels but I didn’t know which direction I was being taken in in ‘Dark Acres’.

I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a good scare!

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1 person found this helpful