Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror by Monica Valentinelli

Haunted: 11 Tales of Ghostly Horror Reviews

• 
  Gerard

  Given that I have spent the last two years gorging on post apocalyptic books I thought it was time for a break and so I chose to read Haunted: 11 tales, these tales all infer a connection to Ghost Hunting. Many of us have seen this on TV and normally revolve around a few guys with tattoos jumping at the sign of moth; I was interested to see what writers would do with the genre. I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised; this is a great anthology by a group of writers which were largely unknown to me before and I will certainly be buying books from some of the contributors. The whole anthology flows really well with no real repetition.
  
  If you are fan of Ghost Hunting in particular you will see characters that are similar to your favourite TV show hosts and if you are not, then these stories are loosely connected enough that you can take them as just ghost stories, so I can recommend it for both sets of fans. The stories here are intelligent and cleverly crafted and as such they do not result having to stoop to gore and sex scenes but they do have enough jumps and turns to keep most people interested. I would recommend this book for readers from about the age of thirteen and up, but I will stress that it is aimed at the adult market.
  
  There were not many negatives to this collection but here is what I have: On the subject of English accents (please take note all would be authors), the audience is intelligent enough that an accent can be imagined, writing the text in some would be 1890´s Victorian style that did not exist outside of the movies is both inaccurate and annoying.
  
  All of the short stories had enough flesh on them to make you want to get to that last paragraph and find out what is the conclusion or in some case what the hell is going on. Here you have a good mix of the protagonist wins, draws and then a couple of OMGs!
  
  The few stories that were stand out for me were Immaterial Witness, where an arrogant hunter becomes the villain and What’s the frequency, Francis? This, despite the aforementioned accent problem, is a really good story with a superb final line twist and really sets the bar and tone for the whole book. The Angry Stick closes the anthology with a great tale of a hunter haunted by his own jealous ex-girlfriend that has a conclusion which I never saw coming and closes off with finality for both that story and the whole book that left me with a very satisfactory feeling.
  The editing is sharp and the flow of stories is good throughout. I like to be able to digest a story after reading it but found myself turning to read the next story, so whether you like the genre or if you fancy a break from the latest glut of average books then I can highly recommend this one.
  
• 
  Tracy

  If you're tired of all the vampires and werewolves overrunning fiction these days, how about a nice bunch of scary ghost stories? This collection has a wide variety of ghost hunters in it... those who proceed foolishly, those who proceed scientifically, and those who have questionable motives. Very refreshing!
• 
  Skyla

  Great collection of short stories. All were well done, though I think my favourites were Beaverson's, Wendig's, Sizemore's, Dansky's, and Dubose's.
• 
  Pam

  Liked it