Daniel Kraus can do anything. Here, it's true crime with a chilling vein of the supernatural; the skill is here, and the story is well told. The setting becomes a character. The ending is a killer. This is going to be incredibly popular with readers who liked Richard Chizmar's Chasing the Boogeyman, especially among those who usually prefer a bit of the paranormal. A number of other reviews have noted fatphobia, or fat as shorthand for evil, and while a case can certainly be made for that reading, I think the ending works against that case. True crime readers, podcast listeners, horror readers: all likely consumers for this title, which would be good gateway Kraus.

Daniel Kraus is investigating a three year old supernatural travesty that occurred at a fast food burger joint. The book unfolds through interviews of the survivors and Kraus talking about the videos and notes from the deadly events.
I am not a true crime junkie and this book has that same feeling. I don’t get the connection to the characters that I crave. That is my experience but it seems like others enjoy it. If that is your thing then this is well done.

This story delivered far more than I expected. The premise is so original and I fell in love with the distinguishable characters. Such a cool concept, highly recommend!

The premise of this one was amazing… but the execution fell flat for me. The tone was just too light and humorous for my tastes which spoiled the "true crime" aspect of the story. The ending was the best part because the book finally felt super Meta.

I got to 32% and I just couldn’t force myself to keep going. I think a huge part of it was the formatting - it was so messy and it didn’t matter what I tried to do, it didn’t straighten out enough where it wasn’t frustrating.

Now, as far as the actual story goes - hella creative. I love the idea of a fictional true crime. I thought that was super cool and done decently well. My issue with the story itself was that I just couldn’t latch onto any of the characters enough to really care about what happens to them - and again, this could partly be because the formatting was actually making it hard for me to pay full attention. I might have to just try the physical version.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I really wanted to like this book, and there was a lot about it that I did like--it was well written and captivating. But this is yet another book in the horror genre that uses fatphobia as a critical part of the plot. Not into it, left a bad taste in my mouth. I won't be recommending this book.

I found this an average read until the very end, then it blindsided me. The ending was unbelievable. I loved the setting was a fast food restaurant and there was plenty of gory parts.

This was a fun read. Pretty long but it worked ok. The ending was so-so. I’m reminded of Stephen King’s Thinner at times. I enjoyed the layout of the book, faux true crime.

Reading a horror novel, I expect to be uncomfortable, queasy, grossed out. Horrified, essentially. I don’t even mind the unreality, though it was a mindfuck - honestly in a cool way.
—Spoiler—
But I think the points here could have been made without rampant fatphobia. Obviously the book has themes of the culture of consumption in the US through the lens of fast food horror and heartland gothic and I get what he was trying to do with the “the guy who killed a bunch of his fast food service coworker gets inexplicably fat in the insane asylum while the survivors all waste away” metaphor. It bothered me at an ignorable level while I was enjoying the rest of the book but honestly I’m sick of fatness as shorthand for excessiveness and immorality, and most especially for evil. It’s tired, it’s done. While part of what the last chapter did something cool, but fatness as transmissible evil makes me want to sew my eyes shut and never read a book again. Totally ruined my day and probably my week.

So good!!! If you enjoyed Chasing the Boogyman because of it's 'true crime' feel, then you will really enjoy this one.
Scary, yes...but also humorous and touching (but not too much to be icky).
All in all a blast from cover to cover!

This book is written like a true crime book and it's simply fantastic. It hits all the marks of a true crime tome: footnotes, references, dates and times, and even pictures.

While the majority of the book contemplates if there was actually anything paranormal about the haunting in question or the brutal massacre at the end, the last pages turns that doubt into full blown horror territory with our questions answered about the validity of the claims.

This book is so well done in it's format you'll be using Google just to make sure this isn't a work of non fiction! It's completely engrossing and will keep you up at night as you keep turning the pages. I highly recommend it.

Without in any way detracting from how engrossing and horrifying this engrossing novel is, from the beginning I experienced such strong overtones of fiction by Grady Hendrix and Daryl Gregory, as well as true-crime Nonfiction and true-crime podcast transcripts. Simultaneously, reading the unfolding story, I felt like a Paris citizen standing on the Avenue watching the Juggernaut rolling with royal victims to the guillotine. The foreshadowing frisson in this novel is as heavy as the silence preceding a tornado lurking just over your shoulder.


In addition to the weight of the foreshadowing, which should cause sensible individuals to run away before uncovering the inevitable tragedies, the novel carries its own compulsion: like witnessing a passenger train about to collide with a stalled fuel tanker, the reader simply cannot turn away! We are compelled to witness to the end, no matter how horrifying, nor unavoidable. We must watch and witness.

If you like gory horror you will want to read this first person novel by the author of Rotters (which totally grossed me out as I tend to read in full olfactory mode). It is told as if Daniel Kraus is writing a true crime book about the evil events that happened in an Iowa fast food joint. Full of footnotes, readers with strong stomachs who are undaunted by blood, vomit, stench, violence, and evil will eat it up. As I personally prefer sparkly, happy, magic infused, romance novels, this was not a good choice for me but I recognize horror fans will love it. Kraus is great at writing books that make the reader turn the pages.

The cover for this really caught my attention. I'm a sucker for true crime so I was happy I got accepted for this arc. Just to clarify, this book is completely fiction. It's a fictional book written as if it were a true crime novel which I thought was very interesting. This mockumentary style book is filled with interviews, footnotes, and photographs. It made me forget that this story wasn't real. The pacing felt a little slow for me at times. I had to skim some of the paragraphs with details about things because they didn't seem relevant to the story. I recommend reading this in physical format because im the ebook format footnotes were oddly placed and I feel like the photographs would be better in a physical book. Overall I give this 3.5 stars.

I'll be posting this review around the release date at: www.instagram.com/chibichapters/

I fell in love with the cover and the I fell in love with this highly entertaining, well written and original book.
There's humour and a book that could be a true crime but it's a novel, the author did an excellent job in creating the notes.
Loved it, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

That is one wild ride!

This book blends the line of fiction and non-fiction more than any other book I've read. It's a fiction novel written like a true crime novel about a fast food chain in Iowa that some real bad things happen in. The whole novel has annotations and cites news articles and gives other relevant information in. Out of curiosity, I looked up one of the random news articles that are cited and....it was a REAL article. With a real author and a real publishing date and real information in it. So I looked up the next article and...it didn't exist? So this is what I mean when I say the line of fiction and non-fiction are so incredibly blended together that you can't help but wonder if the Burger City Poltergeist is real. This is such an effective way of telling the story because poltergeists and paranormal occurrences in general are all based on that blended line. I'm not even going to lie, I went so far as to having to Google search burger city as a franchise.

When I was reading The Shape of Water, my greatest dislike was how boring the writing was at times. It felt like nothing was happening but at the same time, everything was building up to this one thing which in that book I didn't feel like particularly happened. It felt like a let down. In The Ghost that Ate Us, there were times I felt bored by the writing and by the story. It felt like I was being overwhelmed with information and it had no end or purpose in sight. Everything is building up to the incident that happened on June 1 and we're waiting and waiting and waiting. When the time does eventually come, it is certainly not a let down but it's all that waiting that I wish felt less boring. The last 50 pages or so of this book really take off and I wish some of that energy and action came a little bit sooner. I felt myself dragging the first half of the book but the second half had me hooked.

This is a super unique read and quite the journey to go on. This is going right on my list of recommendations for people who want something they've never read before.

Thanks to NetGalley and Raw Dog Screaming Press for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Wasn't a big fan, was hard to read and couldn't get into it. I'm usually a big fan of true crime but for whatever reason this format doesn't work for me.

DNF'd around 30%.

First of all, thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy. All thought and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I tried to read this book two times and neither time was I able to finish it. I think the concept is really interesting and until now I'd never seen or heard of fictional true crime. I liked how the author used real people, including himself, to add a sense of reality to the fictional true crime. Unfortunately, where this one fell flat for me was the story. I could not get into it and really struggled trying to stay focused on what was happening. I just can't bring myself to finish it.

I had NEVER heard of this! What an intriguing book! Mystery and ghosts! What else could you want in a book? Of course it’s tragic. It was fascinating! I’ll definitely be looking into this more and read more by this author!

I received a copy of this novel through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book at first was slightly slow, but it picked up pace and by the end it was a roller coaster that I couldn't get off of. Truly superb story telling that left me breathless and thinking I knew the whole story all the way until the shocking end. Highly recommend.