Goodreads Book Review: Haunted

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I wish this site allowed half-stars, because three stars feels like too few but four stars feels like not enough; I gave Invisible Monsters four stars, and this wasn't as good as that in my opinion, so I'm going with three here. The first thought I had when thinking about how to review this book is that I hope Chuck Palahniuk has weekly therapy sessions to talk about what goes on in his head, because my man has one scary-ass mindscape. This is one disturbing, bleak book in and of itself, and some of the short stories found within take words like "discomforting" and "gross" and "twisted" and "perverted" and takes them to whole new levels. Some of those short stories I really enjoyed, some I didn't; which is odd considering he doesn't change styles or voices when writing them to sort of set the narrators of them apart, so you'd expect them all to be as good, but some fell flat to me. I did enjoy the framing sequence as a whole though, especially the bit of a twist at the end that I didn't see coming. All told, though, I definitely would recommend this to other people... if only because I want you all to be as disturbed by it as I was!



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Just four days away from the six month mark, this was the fourteenth book in my Recommended Reading Challenge and the first time an author made a return appearance. Fourteen books in six months is pretty good; not the fastest pace I've ever been on, but still good. The Challenge has reached a problem, though; there's only two books left on it, The Fuck Up and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, neither of which I've been able to get my hands on... so I need more recommendations! Let's go, people!