I had a real hard time getting into this book, I choose to blame my own state of mind rather than the author because the story was interesting and the plot moved at a good pace. If you like McGuire other books I think you'll like this one too.

This is another on a very short list of Seanan McGuire books that just didn't excite me. I will still desperately seek out each new book she writes because there are like, less than 5 of the dozens and dozens of titles she's written that I don't absolutely adore.

Excellent book as always from McGuire, with just the right amount of horror mixed in with good worldbuilding and visuals

Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan Mcguire is the first book in a new series, set in the same world as the Incryptid series but with new characters and dealing with the more ghostly residents.

Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross—a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn’t ask Rose what she thought of the idea. It’s been more than sixty years since that night, and she’s still sixteen, and she’s still running. They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. Mostly she just goes by “Rose,” a hitchhiking ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his. She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her. You can’t kill what’s already dead.

Sparrow Hill Road was not what I expected, but in the very best ways. I was expecting something very much like the books I have already read from Mcguire, and while the skill and style were definitely on par the characters and legends felt fresh and new. Rose is a small town girl, turned ghost, dealing with her new 'life' as a hitchhiking ghost and her new obligations. I enjoyed getting to know Rose. While she honestly wants to help and do the right thing, she is not perfect. She has a temper, sometimes makes mistakes, and is sometimes too soft a touch. All of these traits come together to make her a wonderfully real character. The use of urban legends and well known ghost stories was wonderfully done, I have always been fascinated on how legends both ancient and more modern change and grow, so this was right up my alley. The action is paced well, giving nail biting moments interspersed with backstory and important character development. The secondary characters are not flat, while not quite as developed as Rose they are well layers and complex. Even the characters we only see for one interaction are not stereotypes or simple, they feel real and dynamic. Mcguire is wonderful at making characters that I feel like I know, and whose stories I just want more of after the book is over.
Sparrow Hill Road starts what i hope is another long and highly entertain series from Mcguire. In fact, I already have the next book, The Girl in the Green Silk Gown waiting for me on my kindle and I am looking forward to the read.

As a side note- if you prefer audio books I highly recommend giving this book a listen as well as her other books. I have listened to several books from her other series and while she does have a couple different narrators they are all wonderful.

I really had trouble getting into the book initially and getting caught up in the emotions of the characters. The storyline was good, but it just didn’t stand out in my mind amongst other books in the genre. The blurb was great, but overall the book just fell flat for me. Not what I've come to expect from Seanan McGuire.

McGuire, Seanan. Sparrow Hill Road.

Rose died when she was 16, run off the road by Bobby Cross. Now she travels the ghost roads, helping those she can and seeking her revenge. She's known by many different names in various urban legends, many of which are explored in this novel.

This isn't a fast-paced story; rather, it's a well thought-out, well-developed, slow meander through the United States and the legend of the girl in the green dress (or whichever version you've heard; there are more than a few). We follow Rose as she assists the recently dead with finding their way, protects a few living people, and runs from Bobby Cross. This is a great story to read a chapter at a time before bed, as the story itself is not super fast-paced, but it is a very interesting read. Recommended.

Recommended for: fans of paranormal stories
Red Flags: It's an adult book, so language, violence, etc.
Overall Rating: 3/5 stars

I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley for the purpose of review.

This is not my first reading of Sparrow Hill Road and possibly not even my third. I have lost track of how many times I have read this book which is one point in its favor. Seanan McGuire has created a world that is easily digested and loved. Every time I go back I learn more and more that I have missed on other readings.

What I do remember is that, upon first reading, the chapters felt a little disjointed. Because of its creation as a serial piece the chapters were posted individually every week. On this particular read, the book felt fresh and streamlined. I quickly devoured the book unable to put it down even with the knowledge of what might come up next. The fluctuating timeline felt like something that was meant to be. Without going back and forth from one year to the next some of the magic could have been lost. Rose herself states that living as a ghost means that time moves strangely. This additional information was a fact that I could have missed upon other readings but gave this read new depth.

In conclusion, I love this book. It made me smile, it made me cry, it made me learn to hate some characters while loving others. Once again Seanan McGurie has built a world that I must know more about.

Both Seanan McGuire's October Dayes series and her Wayward Children series are among my all-time favorites. And her Incryptid series is pretty high up on that list. So I had high expectations going into Sparrow Hill Road. While this series has a slightly different tone, the same magic is still present.

Sparrow Hill Road is the story of Rose Marshall, also known as the Girl in the Green Silk Gown or the Girl in the Diner. It’s told somewhat non-linearly, which took me a bit to get used it. However, I ended up loving the format, I felt like it really allowed me to connect with Rose and understand how she became who she is in the present.

As usual, the world-building was absolutely fantastic! The amount of though that goes into every single detail is amazing. From ghosts to psychopomps to diners to ghost riders who are forever young, this world comes alive in vivid color. I also loved the exploration of America’s ghost stories, nomads, and road culture. Fun fact- This series is actually set in the same world as the Incryptid series (you can definitely catch some faster eggs if you’re looking but you don’t need to read that series to enjoy this one).

I wish I had better words to describe this novel but I think it’s best if you just read this one for yourself. At its heart, Sparrow Hill Road is more a character study of a girl who is just trying to figure out where she belongs than a spooky paranormal action story.

Having loved Seanan McGuire's other works, I instantly dove into this book without a moment's pause.

This isn't a typical ghost story that's told around the campfire late at night or in the dark with a flashlight. It's a series of twelve stories that explores the ideas behind urban myths, hitch-hiking ghosts, and how the open road shaped the landscape of America beyond the mortal plane.

Rose Marshall is a ghost, and has been for the past 60 years, give or take. She was run off the road at Sparrow Hill Road by Bobby Cross as his means for immortality. But she escaped, and has been running from him since. She's meant to be a free spirit, traveling from coast to coast. But somehow in the afterlife, she winds up becoming much more. The stories are not necessarily in chronological order. They crisscross through years and mileage as Rose discovers what sort of ghost she's meant to be. and go through excerpts of simple joys, to the darker aspects of being dead that Rose experiences in her search for answers.

There are some nods to some of Seanan McGuire's other works in the form of olfactory sleuthing and a cameo mention of distant relations who like to study cryptozoology. But they don't detract from the story. If anything, they add to the world building and make you wonder how much if it is all happening within the same universe.

Thank you NetGally for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Excellent introduction into this series, and Rose Morgan. I look forward to read the full novel, The Girl in the Green Silk Gown

Sparrow Hill Road is a bit disjointed. Now I’m not sure if that is literary genius because the main character is a ghost and so her life/afterlife IS a little disjointed time-wise or because that is just the nature of this collection of stories.

Rose is dead and she has been for about sixty years now but that doesn’t stop her from hitching a ride now and again and dropping into the living world to have a little bit of a good time or help someone in need. Sometimes she is able to save them, but other times, she is only able to help them after and make sure they don’t get stuck in the in-between of life and death.

Some of these stories could be really sad, depending on how you view death. I tried to just go with this storie's version of it; it was just a doorway to a new adventure and so it was okay when one of the people Rose tried to help live ended up dead. At least she was there to hold their hand and make sure they ended up where they were supposed to go.

Rose is the main character of a thousand different ghost stories. Some of them more true than others, in some she is the source of death and in others she is the guardian angel looking out for the living in diners, truck stops and on highways.

Overall Rose is really likable and she has a pretty good understanding of her death now. She even has a bit of a calling and a few friends to boot. Still she is always looking over her shoulder, watching out for the man that killed her on Sparrow Hill Road and trying desperately to save more people for becoming another victim to the man in the car that made a deal with the devil.

There are parts in this which made me happy and some made me almost cry. I really loved getting Rose’s story of her death; it was beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time. I have mixed feeling about Gary and his choices BUT I reserve judgement because I think later it is going to work out as a really weird type of HEA, if ghosts get those.

The world building of the twilight and midnight was interesting and I liked the glimpses we got into the different kinds of ghosts that can be made and what they might be up to. I also really liked the possibilities this presented for future stories and other things from death lore that popped up like Valkeries (I’m very interested in those creatures). It seems like just about anything could happen and I like jumping into Urban Fantasy that stretches the norms of the genre and takes chances on new ideas you don’t see often, especially as the main focus and a dead girl being the MC is definitely not something I’ve read until now.

“Homecomer, hitcher, phantom rider,
White lady wants what’s been denied her,
Gather-grim knows what you fear the most,
But best keep away from the crossroads ghost.”

I received a free e-copy through NetGalley from the publishers at Berkley Publishing Group. Seanan McGuire has become an automatic read for me. Her books blend gorgeous writing, strong female characters, diversity, and top-shelf horror, and I’m not sure how I lived this long without them. Trigger warnings: death, car accident.

Rose Marshall has been dead for more than sixty years, but that hasn’t stopped her from traveling North America one hitched ride after another. She’s the Girl in the Diner, the Phantom Prom Date, the Girl in the Green Silk Gown, and the Phantom Hitchhiker. Countless urban legends have sprung up in her wake, but Rose has never been a vengeful spirit. Borrowing coats and diner meals lends her “life” of a fashion, at least for the night, and she does her best to help drivers avoid accidents. When she can’t, she helps them crossover on the ghostroads. Killed on the night of her prom, Rose’s death wasn’t an accident though, and the wicked spirit of Bobby Cross who ran her off the road is still hunting souls to fuel his afterlife. Rose is the one who got away, and she may be the only one who can stop him.

I’m in love with this world. Supernatural is always the way to my heart, and few do supernatural as well as McGuire. I’m not convinced she’s making up stories so much as peering into alternate dimensions and reporting on what she finds there. Everything about it feels plausible. It helps that she’s building on urban legends I’ve heard my whole life, from phantom hitchhikers and ladies in white to the ghost car running innocents off the road at midnight. The “first-person accounts” and songs about Rose only add to the mythology. McGuire takes well-loved tales and gives them shape, depth, and character, and from it we get a totally unique North America full of ghosts, phantom diners, and layers of roads that stretch into the past and cater to both living and dead. This would be a great road trip novel, since it’s full to the brim of cars, truckers, and roadside diners–all those little quirks of the road that make traveling its own self-contained universe.

I wish the introduction had come at the beginning of my digital edition because it clears up some of the problems I was having with the structure of this novel. It doesn’t read quite like a novel so much as a cross between a series of short stories with the same protagonist and an extremely circular novel. Rose notes toward the beginning of the text that ghosts don’t experience time in a way that’s linear, so the story isn’t told that way either. This makes sense in hindsight, since Rose’s story was originally published once a month for a year on a fiction website, and it’s not hard to tell that it began life (or death?) as something else. There are a lot of repetitions of Rose’s mythology in each section, and while many of the stories have crossover, particularly toward the second half of the novel, some of them feel entirely separate from the rest. It’s not in any sense tightly plotted, nor is it messy in a way that suggests carelessness, but it is occasionally distracting. Novels have a beginning, middle, and end, and Sparrow Hill Road has several of them. A handful of her adventures don’t intersect with the overarching plot, but they’re still damn entertaining to read.

Rose is a great main character. She’s sassy and independent, a little like her fellow deadgirl Shari Cooper from Remember Me, only more mature–obviously, since she looks eternally sixteen but is actually over seventy. I had fun tracking her clothing, which sometimes has a mind of its own, and her fixations on acquiring a coat and a cheeseburger. She’s also pretty straightforwardly good, and she does her best to protect the living even when it’s terribly inconvenient or even dangerous to her (since, while dead, ghosts can still be exorcised or eaten by bigger, deader things). Bobby Cross doesn’t quite reach the level of terrifying urban legend villain that I was hoping for, but he’s also not on the page very often. The end takes an unexpected turn, and while the showdown between Bobby and Rose is satisfying, I’m looking forward to a rematch in the next book.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

So, I want to note that the rating is a reflection partially of the subject matter.

I LOVED the concept - building the mythology behind all those ghost stories you heard as a kid. The book follows Rose, who died on the way to her prom. After she died, she became a hitchhiking ghost, helping other souls who died on the road get to where they were going. Rose doesn't age - even 60 years later, she is still sixteen and still travelling the roads looking for a ride.

The problem I had was twofold - the book is apparently set in-universe to one of Seanan's other works and it's HEAVY on the Americana. I haven't read many of Seanan's other works, so this made a lot of the book a little bit of a guessing game for what some of the terms meant. It also meant that I likely missed a lot of references and cameos. The book was also so into cars, small towns, diesel, trucks, and small diners. Classic Americana stuff. I'm not American so I don't think it translated so well for me.

It is very well written, and I think that there will definitely be people who will appreciate it more, I just don't think that this was the right book for me.

Seanan McGuire is one of my must-read authors, and Sparrow Hill Road is another great addition to her repertoire. In this story she creates one of her most complicated and enthralling heroines to date. I loved the road trip this story took me on and it was everything I love about a good ghost story.

Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire is the first book of the paranormal fantasy Ghost Roads series. This series was originally released back in May of 2014 but is now being re-published. It centers around the stories of a ghost of a sixteen year old girl who many have claimed to have contact with over the years.

Rose Marshall was a typical sixteen year old back in 1952 and only wanted to head to her prom the night that she died in Buckley Township, Michigan. Rose had been run off the road causing a horrible accident by a man named Bobby Cross who was using the souls of his unfortunate victims to stay young forever.

For sixty years now Rose has been on the move hitchhiking around and coming in contact with many travelers most of which come to their own unfortunate ends. Rose often finds herself still having to run from Bobby Cross from time to time as he still travels around staying forever young.

Sparrow Hill Road was a rather creative read overall covering many different times over Rose’s sixty years of being a ghosts. The author has come up with a whole host of different types of ghosts and a very intricate afterlife to tell Rose’s story. There were times though that it could be a tad confusing jumping from one town/time period and then quickly to something else only to return back again and so forth. But in the end the creativity of the story won me over and I decided to give this one 3.5 stars.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Rose Marshall is sixteen and running from the man who ran her off the road. She’s been sixteen and on the run since prom night. Since she’d made a rash decision while angry. Since 1952 when she took the keys to her brother’s car and the short cut on Sparrow Hill Road to look for her boyfriend. Bobby Cross is still hunting her, trying to catch the one that got away and feed his immortality a little longer. He won’t stop until he catches up to her. But at least he can’t kill someone who’s already dead.

Seanan McGuire’s Sparrow Hill Road is interesting to me in a lot of ways. It started out as a set of twelve short stories published across a year. Those stories were well received enough to be reworked a little and republished as a novel. That, to me, is all kinds of awesome. Then you jump into Sparrow Hill Road being a ghost’s story rather than a ghost story. It’s Rose’s story to tell and she’s well aware of a lot of the folk lore surrounding her and those like her. I actually have a little trouble talking about this one because of how much I enjoyed it.

This isn’t a settled book by any means. It roams from decade to decade and coast to coast, from living to dead and back again. The characters likewise never seem to settle. Weather that means the phantom driver who spends his afterlife racing the road he died on or the route witches whose magic is called from driving and the road itself. Pauses are brief and stopping or being stopped always seems to carry a risk. That doesn’t mean that the book moves at a breakneck pace throughout its run, Ms. McGuire does a fantastic job with her pacing here. It never felt like I needed to pause and reread something to understand what was going on. It also never felt like the book was dragged down by over explaining things.

Rose’s ability to borrow life from a willingly offered piece of outer ware is fascinating to me, likewise the rule that she can enjoy food and drink only if it’s willingly offered by a living being. Both serve to allow her to, temporarily at least, experience the parts of living that she’d enjoyed and interact with normal people as though she were one of them. It also serves to limit Rose. She can only borrow life until the sun comes up so she’s a ghost, cold and insubstantial, during the day and any food she eats that isn’t willingly offered tastes of ash. The aspect of Rose having chosen to guide the dead is also an interesting one. It isn’t something she’s bound to, at least not beyond feeling a sort of responsibility for the newly dead. It’s something she doesn’t always want to do and, in fact, something of a mirror to her habit of trying to help drivers avoid their deaths. Of course, both of those choices lead to her being seen around horrific traffic accidents and being blamed as a result.

That feels like sort of a running thing through the book, people act without knowing the full story. It happens with Rose, with the story of the pretty dead girl up on Sparrow Hill Road and all the people she’s supposedly killed. It happens with a number of the characters introduced within each section of the book, they react to the bits they know but act before digging further. They jump to conclusions while angry or confused and go based on their impressions. It’s a sort of humanizing thing that allows for a lot of the conflict in the book without it feeling like it was just thrown in.

Speaking of conflict, if there’s a bit that didn’t entirely work for me it winds up being Bobby Cross himself. This goes back to Sparrow Hill Road having originally been a set of short stories. Bobby Cross feels like a week antagonist, largely because he doesn’t have much to do early on. He’s the one who killed Rose. He wants to finish the job. Not has to, wants to. But for a lot of the book’s run it doesn’t feel like he’s a threat. The antagonists from other sections tend to be more present, likely because that’s their moment while Bobby is running a long game. When he’s effective, he’s great but when he’s not he just sort of feels like a disposable villain of the week.

I started writing this review knowing that I was going to give it a five out of five. I enjoyed it enough to not really know how to write about it without just throwing words for pages on end. Even now there are bits that I want to go back and add more thoughts on. I think I’ve come to a decent place to end this though. Sparrow Hill Road is well worth the read and I’m super excited for the next one.

This new review is for a beautiful special edition of Sparrow Hill Road, a book that was first released in 2014, in advance of a forthcoming Ghost Roads sequel. There is new material in this edition, as mentioned below.

Rose Marshall is the Girl in the Green Silk Gown, the Ghost of Sparrow Hill Road, the Girl at the Diner, and a hitchhiking ghost who, when she drives herself, does so in a deep sea green Ford Crestline Sunliner named Gary. She's a ghost, an urban legend, the girl who will get you home, and she's marvelous and kind. She's been dead much longer than she was alive (d. 1952) and has accrued quite a bit of wisdom in the time since she died.

This book originated as a serial for Jennifer Brozek's online magazine The Edge of Propinquity back in 2010, and was broadened into a book in 2014. Rose's story has slowly merged into McGuire's 2018 Hugo-nominated InCryptid series (particularly the Antimony Price books) but the novel also works as a standalone, without the Price Family component. (Full disclosure, there are no Aeslin mice here.) But if you are reading the InCryptid series you really ought to read Rose's story to fully appreciate the integration of ghosts like Rose Marshall and Mary Dunlavy into the InCryptid world. This book is especially relevant to understanding how Crossroads Ghosts operate and how they can sometimes make serious, Bobby Cross level mistakes out of sheer naiveté.

This was my third reading of the book (first in this new edition) and I continue to enjoy it, perhaps even more so over time, as I gain a further appreciation for McGuire's depth of worldbuilding in the InCryptid series. As mentioned above, Rose is getting a sequel in July 2018, titled The Girl in the Green Silk Gown.

New Material Summary: Along with a new cover that is in keeping with the forthcoming sequel's cover, we also get eleven pages of the lyrics of the McGuire's filk songs that seeded the beginning of Rose Marshall's story, including Pretty Little Dead Girl (as McGuire says, the filthy libel version of Rose's story, a song with which Rose is very dissatisfied), Graveyard Rose (the whitewashed version of Rose's story), Hanging Tree, Waxen Wings, and Sparrow Hill Road. If you're a Seanan fan, who also loves her filk music and poetry, this book would be worth a rebuy just for these lyrics!

An unusual, highly inventive ghost story focusing on a 16-year-old dead girl who haunts the highways and byways of America. The book has a mythical tone to it, and I enjoyed the legend of Rose Marshall, both as told by Rose herself and filtered through the various stories that have sprung up over the years about the girl in the green prom dress.

Thanks to netgalley, for providing me a copy of the upcoming 2018 edition in exchange for a fair review.

I first read this in 2015 - I always enjoy Seanan McGuire's books, and I read everything that she writes. In the interim, I have read many of the books from the Incryptid series, which include bits and pieces of information about Rose, as well as other family friends who appear in Sparrow Hill Road. A lot of the information shows up in the free short stories in the series that you can read on Ms. McGuire's website.

Perhaps because of getting deeper into the Incryptid series, I enjoyed this even more than when I read it in 2015 - maybe because there's now a context for this? I don't know if there have been any changes in this from the 2014 edition, but I enjoyed this very much.

At any rate, I love the plot idea - that people who die don't necessarily move on, but sometimes stick around to be various road ghosts with their own agenda (there's a handy appendix, explaining the various types of road ghosts). And the way she works in the various campfire stories makes it all seem familiar, yet fresh at the same time!

I am definitely looking forward to the upcoming second book in the series!

While Seanan McGuire’s writing style shines, her storyline does not. At times Rose’s story seems repetitive and long winded. It is believable that, as a ghost, her perception of time must be skewed and perhaps that is why the chapters feel so fractured. Still, it felt like too much at times and it felt like a collection of short stories loosely linked by Rose’s overall mission and reason for haunting the Amercian Highway. The general premise for this text was what drew me in, and McGuire does not disappoint. If you’re ready for a new take on ghosts, the American highway, and the afterlife, pick this up. Driving down the interstate won’t ever be the same. (Review to come on my channel.)