Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I need to be very clear about this: I read it mainly because it is written by Seanan McGuire, not because I was particularly enthralled by the subject matter. I prepared myself for merely *liking* the book, not loving it.

At first, it just appeared to be a rather good character study of an already dead girl, dead back in '53, as she jaunted from time to time because that's what the dead does -- getting filled in on her after-death and the status of her urban legend ghosthood.

And then something happened. Maybe it's how Seanan approached the character, as a dozen snippets and somewhat contradictory stories, but she wrote one of the most complicated and delightfully rounded characters I've yet seen from her. Our dead heroine really came alive.

Death, tragedy, and psychopomps. It's a real roadtrip novel based in the real world and the roads of the dead, from Highway 1 to the Ocean Lady, crossroads guardians, deals with dead witches, and a ghost rider from a precursor of James Dean who eats souls to stay forever young, this entire novel rocked.

There are so many sides to it, but it's always close to the chest and raw and real.

I'm afraid I fell in love with it. It ranks up higher than Seanan's Incryptid series, easy. It probably outshines books 2 and 3 of Wayward children, too. It's hard to compare it to the whole of the Daye novels, but it is better than some of them. It's an entirely different beast from her Grant novels tho, so I won't even try to compare. :)

I honestly want more of this. Please, more Ghost Roads!

Anyone who loves urban legends will definitely enjoy this book. Offers an explanation for the vanishing hitchhiker. While this story takes place in the same universe as the incryptid series, it works perfectly as a stand alone. However, once you've read this you'll be looking for the rest of Seanan McGuire's works if you haven't already read them.

Sorry but I couldn't get into the book at all. I tried though, I'm so sorry for my ADD brain.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group DAW for a digital galley of this book.

Another version of Sparrow Hill Road will be released in June 2018. I hope there is some new material included. I haven't read any Seanan McGuire books before so all of this was new to me while established fans are probably going to see mostly stories they have read before. I will confess to having a hard time remaining focused on this book because the stories are just so much alike. I can see they would be very interesting if they were placed in anthologies or collections of like stories but to have them all here just one after another made them pretty hard for me to care much about. I've assigned a three star rating because the writing is good and the basic premise was excellent until I began to realize I was just reading the same thing over and over.

So you've heard the story about Rose Marshall right? How she died on the way to her prom and became a ghost? Some say she leads men to their deaths when they offer her a ride, others claim she's only trying to save the ones who aren't too far gone. Whatever you've heard this is her story; the story of how a small town 16 year old girl who just wanted more from life could turn into an urban legend everybody knew.

Unlike a lot of folk going into this book cold I knew that the "Rose Marshall" stories were episodic and at one time spread across the internet as far as possible. I went into the book knowing this and thus wasn't surprised or irritated by the repetition from time to time. Rose spends half of her time educating the reader (or newly dead) on what it means to live in the Twilight. What you lose, what you gain, what the rules are that govern those who travel the Ghost Roads.

Rose is a "Hitcher" or a "Hitchhiker", she's drawn to those who live their life on the road or will die because of it. That young girl you see on the side of some lonely back road or hanging at a diner off the beaten track? Probably Rose. She'll hitch a ride to get to where she needs to go and maybe, if you're very lucky and your time hasn't come, she can even prevent you from dying on the road.

As she explains the stories aren't told in a very linear fashion, not til closer to the end when they begin to bleed into one and other and you can't have one without the other. By in large a good half of the book can be read in whatever order you want. I'm not sure if MacGuire (or her editor or Publisher) decided to mix them up even more. What I can say is that some details you'll read about in one chapter, you won't find out the truth of the tale until a later chapter. And some truths are harder to handle then others.

Woven throughout is Rose's crusade to stop "Bobby Cross" (the man who killed her to become an immortal legend) and her resolve to prevent him from doing to others what he did to her. Sometimes she's successful, other times she's not, but through it all she has a grim determination and resolve. Its more then revenge, though several characters ask her if that's what it is to her. She found a purpose in her aimless wandering after life and she was bound and determined to make it through.

I really liked Rose--she's much more practical and pragmatic then many of the characters running around in fiction, especially of those who are "teenagers", but not really (looking at you every single teen vampire/immortal out there). She didn't stay "stuck" in time, she moved on, she grew and expanded and learned how to work the system. She's not without her flaws of course, and we see as she makes mistakes that she later reflects on and realize it was really dumb to not notice the issues, but she felt so very real.

Insofar as other recurring characters go there are a few--Emma, the bean sidhe who Rose befriends, Tommy who she once asked for a ride from, Bobby Cross who we don't meet in the "flesh" until later in the book but who's shadow is long and dark. Emma is likeable and given more depth then either Tommy or Bobby in my opinion. Bobby is...he's portrayed as a certain kind of guy who many of us know or know of.

There's some loose-ish ends that don't get as much tying up, comments from Rose that drift away as her confrontation with Bobby looms, snippets of conversations that she doesn't focus on in her pursuit. And this book can get downright creepy and spooky, though I found myself feeling sorry for many of the people Rose comes across. Some of them just don't know any better, which is sad and pitiful no matter if you are alive or dead.

Rose Marshall's life ended before it really began, but that doesn't mean she's out of the picture. Of course, being dead comes with its own set of rules. Little things like how she's always cold unless she borrows a jacket from the living. Or how food she makes for herself tastes like ashes. Plus, there's that whole thing where she can sense when death is getting close to some of the living she crosses paths with.

Oh, yeah. And then there's the jerk who killed her and his twisted plans for her.

Rose's story is complicated. The world she knew before is mostly gone. She knows how to navigate the dangers of the ghost roads and she does it well. But it's a lonely existence. She has a few friends. A few enemies. And a whole bunch of people who know the legend of the girl in the diner.

I enjoyed the entire book, but I really started loving it when Rose's search for how to stop Bobby Cross began. She's been on the run for sixty years and she's done. She's ready to face her tormentor. It's just a matter of figuring out his weak spots, right?

I'm going to be intentionally vague here. Deal with it. THAT CAR, THO! O.O

Bring on book 2!

This was not what I expected after reading the books sysnopsis. I thought it was going to be a single story telling when in reality it was a collaboration of short stories and novella length stories all focusing on the legends surrounding Rose Marshall, a ghost, and her battle against the man, now ghost, Bobby Cross that killed her and set the path for her ride the ghost roads for eternity.

That being said, Seanan McGuire pens magical tales that catapults the reader into a world of myths and legends. This is not a HEA type of read, with a heavy dose of dark urban fantasy...its a ghost story what else could you expect.

I received this copy of Sparrow Hill Road from Berkley Publishing Group. This is my honest and voluntary review.

My Rating: 4 stars
Written by Seanan McGuire
Series: Ghost Stories
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: DAW (2014)
ISBN-10: 0756409616
ISBN-13: 978-0756409616
Genre: Urban Fantasy | Ghost Stories

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sparrow-Hill-R...
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spar...
Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook...

For more reviews check out Tome Tender's Book Blog or find us on Facebook.

17 likes

It’s been wonderful to watch Seanan McGuire mature as a writer. For someone so prolific, her work is consistently entertaining and more and more rises to the truly memorable. Her outstanding novella, Every Heart a Doorway, won multiple awards, including the Hugo and the Nebula. Her innovative, deeply moving ghost story, Sparrow Hill Road, is just as good, although in a different way. She begins the with legend of Rose Marshall, the Prom Date ghost, the Girl in the Diner, a hitch hiking spirit who is drawn to people soon to be involved in fatal accidents, and who sometimes manages to prevent their deaths. She’s no ordinary ghost but a psychopomp, who guides the spirits of those she cannot save to the next stage of their journeys. The story proceeds like a chambered nautilus, sometimes spiraling back on itself, jumping back and forth in time to weave together the threads of the story until we come to the crux of Rose’s ghosthood, how she died, and who killed her. Absorbing, wise, funny, and tragic, all in all a superbly executed ghostly tale.

I'm a monster fan of Seanan to begin with, and this, while different from her normal fare, does NOT disappoint!

I love Seanan McGuire, and "Sparrow Hill Road" is another fun addition to her growing catalogue. In this book we're introduced to Rose Marshall, the girl who was killed on prom night and is now a hitchhiking ghost, making her way across the roads of America. This book is not really a novel, but a collection of short stories all featuring Rose.

The most interesting part of Rose's story is probably the world that McGuire builds around the ghosts and other supernatural entities that are tied to roads and rest stops. There are hitchhiking ghosts like Rose, who can only interact with the physical world through very specific rules; there are road witches, who draw power from distances traveled; there are crossroads spirits, known for deal making. Getting to know all of these creatures and seeing the culture they build is the real strength of this book.

Sparrow Hill is nominally tied to McGuire's InCryptid series, but you don't have to have any familiarity with those books to enjoy this one. The best thing about "Sparrow Hill Road" is that there is a full sequel coming this Summer. While the episodic nature of this book makes it a little less exciting to me then a full novel, I am very much looking forward to reading more about Rose Marshall and her existence on the road.

McGuire's companion book about a crossroads ghost is not a necessary read but a pleasant addition to the Incryptid world/novels. The backstory on Mary is interesting and quite readable. This is a reprint of an older novel.

Thanks to Netgalley and Berkley for providing me with a review copy, only asking for an honest review in exchange!

Seanan sure knows how to pack a punch. Many of these short stories leave you feeling sad for Rose Marshall, hitchhiking ghost. Many of them leave you hoping that if these ghost roads are real, that Rose Marshall is real too and out there helping ghosts move on and getting rid of old haunted roads.

But mostly, they leave you wishing Seanan would continue the story. :) Luckily for us, she IS continuing the story in The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, coming in July!!! So excited!

I can't wait to see if any of our favorite Incryptid characters make a guest appearance, but mostly, I'm ready to see Rose finally defeat the obnoxious, evil, dastardly Bobby Cross!

I had a lot of fun reading this book. The writing was amazing and brought such a lyrical aspect to the story that there were moments where I forgot I was reading a ghost story and yet sometimes it reminded me that this really was a ghost story. I fell in love with the characters and had a great time seeing how they got to where they were and how all their stories came into play with Rose. The one thing I wasn’t crazy about was how the story was written. It was a lot of jumping back and forth from present to past and even though you are given warning about it, I wasn’t fully prepared for how much it was done. It was my biggest issue with this book. There would be moments when I was almost biting my nails to see what would happen next, only for it to jump back into the past and the rest of the scenes would be like that. It took the drama and suspense out of moments that should have blown me away. I do want to pick up the sequel though and see how everything turns out. That characters where just that well written, that it left you want more.