Written as a faux-true-crime story told by a skeptical investigative journalist, this story describes a dark, demonic force taking over a fast-food joint in the middle of nowhere midwestern America. It sounds comical and parts of it are, but this is a very dark read, very well written. The pages turn and turn with plenty of spooky otherworldly action. It also has an incredibly cool meta-message about the fast food industry, and pokes fun at true crime. The author writes "as himself" and towards the end references his previous horror novels which come into play as part of a brilliant denouement. Really fine contemporary literary horror. I will recommend it up and down to all horror and true crime enthusiasts!

Thank you very much for the opportunity to read and review this book!

" Gonna be a star... of a Daniel Kraus book. Can you... believe it?"

Pub Date 12 Jul 2022

Thank you Netgalley & RawDogScreamingPress for this ARC in exchange for an honest review! I loved right from the beginning, the back and forth way this story unfolds. A lot of true crime books have a tendency to cram a bunch of details and characters at you. Usually right from the get-go, which can be hard to absorb and follow. Daniel Kraus weaves this what should be national front page news story, except none if it is real! "True crime" comedy is the only way I can even remotley begin to describe it.

First of all, I was drawn to this book mostly because of the cover and the title, I hardly pay attention to the synopsis, so I assumed this story was based on an real event. As a true crime fan, I was very surprised I have never heard about this incredibly tragic murder spree, so I was quite eager to read The Ghost That Ate Us. I read about 85% of the book thinking that it was a true crime that had actually happened! I only found out that it was a fiction when I tried to google the Burger City tragedy and those famous lil Beefy videos to no avail. Daniel Kraus did an amazing job in presenting this as a real true crime story. He presented lots of background information and personal interactions with all the main characters so they felt realistic and believable. The only drawback was the storyline jumped between events/interviews as they unfold in a sudden manner without any clear distinction. I had to read back quite a few times to find my place again. The ending felt a tad bit immature and kitschy. But overall, it's a intriguing concept and captivating read.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy in exchange of a honest review.

Whatever you do, DON’T READ THIS BOOK. If you’ve bought it, just burn it, or, if a digital copy, delete it and empty your trash. Reading this will only cause more pain and suffering.

In all honesty though, this was really fun! Fiction that reads like true crime. If you like found footage horror or true crime documentaries or novels this is the book for you.

I absolutely loved this book. I am a sucker for "non-fiction" fiction; give me fake footnotes, fully immerse me in a world where your story is real, and I'm a happy reader. Daniel Kraus does just that.

I knew that this was a non-fiction true crime book going in to it, but even then I started to question if I had misread the synopsis when I started reading it. From that point on I was fully immersed and hooked. The chronicle Kraus presents is painstakingly detailed. All of the characters feel so real and dynamic, and the events somehow seem possible (and are therefore haunting). It is all presented with a sort of dark humor, but also reverence as if the deaths were real.

I normally don't read true crime. I find it depressing and, to be honest, exploitative. But The Ghost that Ate Us finally gave me a way to read "true crime" and appreciate the way every little detail comes together.
I highly recommend this book to both horror and true crime lovers.

First off I have to address the fact that, while I appreciate being given an advance galley copy in exchange for a review, the poor quality of the ARC definitely impacted my feelings towards the book. I have read dozens of ARCs and this is the first one that was laden with so many typos, punctuation errors and had whole patches of the text misformatted, making it difficult to read.
OK, so I was snookered. When I first came across this book I (obviously) didn't pay close enough attention to the description and actually believed this was nonfiction. At the onset, it really did read like a (not particularly well written) True Crime book. The little details, like mentions of "the true story" appearing on Saturday Night Live and the Travel Channel, and the author putting himself in the book gave it a real sense of legitimacy. It wasn't until about the midpoint of the novel that the whole nonfiction aspect really began to crumble. Between the sophomoric "transcriptions" of the Burger City teens meeting for their own paranormal investigation club and the pretty much laughable description of how the fictitious ghost hunting TV show filmed their episode (plus, googling names and events and coming up with nada) I finally looked at reviews of the book and confirmed my suspicion that this was totally made up. And at that point, even if it was legit, it was still very poorly written for a true crime book. There is so much unnecessary background of people and places it (eventually) became clear this was filler to turn what was probably a novella at best into a full length novel. I give the author credit for trying, but his publisher/editor should have made him do a better job.

Daniel Kraus should be commended for trying something different with The Ghost That Ate Us: The Tragic True Story of the Burger City Poltergeist, which I tried my best to like, but ultimately found both frustrating and irritating. Kraus is a real master of YA fiction, with Rotters (2011) and the awesome Bent Heavens (2020) two of my personal favourites. The Middle Grade Trollhunters (2015) is also highly recommended, as is They Threw Us Away (2020) which is aimed at slightly younger kids and starts off an ongoing trilogy.

In 2019 he picked over the bones of George A Romero’s zombie legacy with the doorstopper The Living Dead, which although got some great reviews I found to be a slog. There are very few writers out there with the capability to produce this range of fiction (it’s immaterial whether I dig it or not) and The Ghost That Ate Us is a wacky addition to a highly impressive literary CV. Apart from Neil Gaiman there are very few authors who write for adults, through YA all the way down to Middle Grade.

This latest novel presents itself as a blend of non-fiction or true crime and the endless footnotes failed to convince and I quickly became bored by the goings on surrounding a so-called poltergeist haunting in a fast-food restaurant. The reader is repeatedly given very dull and irrelevant facts, here is an example from page 213: “’Cage-free’ and ‘humane meat’ are empty, undefined phases used to pat the heads of queasy carnivores. Each day, 25 million chickens, 4 million pigs, and 800,000 cows are slaughtered.” The book is full of this type of fact dropping, none of which added anything in making the book sound authentically non-fiction or realistic and if anything stunted the flow of the plot. It was not convincingly assimilated into the plot and I struggled to maintain interest when such statistics were fed to the reader.

The Ghost That Ate Us is written in such a way that the reader is to assume that Daniel Kraus is also the author of the non-fiction account we are reading. However, his personality, motivations or anything else are completely neutral and non-descript. How would I describe his ‘voice’? I couldn’t, as he barely has one. On a couple of occasions he mentions his other books and there is a funny scene where another character has read Rotters, otherwise the voice is as bland as white paint.

Inserting yourself in your fiction (or non-fiction) is nothing new and it is a pity Daniel Kraus did not make a better job of bringing his narrative to life. In contrast, when I read Richard Chizmar’s Chasing the Boogieman I felt I learned a lot about Richard and his personality, this does not happen in The Ghost That Ate Us at all. Chizmar also brought the nostalgia connected to his childhood hometown to life, in contrast the restaurant location Kraus describes is lacking of character and atmosphere. Many other authors have dropped themselves in their work, including Stephen King, Bret Easton Ellis, Clive Cussler, Douglas Coupland, Darren Shan and HP Lovecraft to name a few.

The story itself is built around the events of June 1 (2017) where six people were killed at a Burger City franchise off I-80 near Jonny, Iowa. This followed nine months of alleged paranormal activity at the fast-food joint-events popularly known as "the Burger City Poltergeist." Daniel Kraus investigates the events by interviewing those involved, digging into their histories and other aspects of working in the restaurant, including relationships, possible motivations for hoaxes or other non-supernatural avenues of research. All of this had the potential for a good story, but it seemed to be lost in a dull hodgepodge of comments, dull/repetitive characters interviews, irrelevant details and for a book with “poltergeist” in the title, nothing about it convinced.

I’m afraid that this book is nowhere as clever as it thinks it is and ultimately is a mixed-up mess that just became more and more frustrating as things moved on. Horror laced with comedy is not easy to pull off and although it was an original idea, it was let down by poor execution and in reality it was obviously very difficult to make supposedly true events set in a burger joint sound interesting.

Trying to emulate true crime, especially when you attempt to use comedy and potential supernatural events, is not easy and although The Ghost That Ate Us tries its best and I became lost in the samey characters, boring detail and ultimately did not care whether the poltergeist was real or not. John Darnielle was more successful with the recent Devil House (without the comedy) blending fiction with the real-life murder which inspired the eighties hit film River’s Edge. Daniel Kraus is a great writer, is totally amazing for kids and teens, and nobody can fault him for trying something a little bit different.

(3.5 stars rounded up)

I was really looking forward to this one -- I’ve seen it splashed all over IG for a while now. The vibrant cover matches Kraus’ vivid descriptions. It reads like a gory true-crime novel, with wry (and often dark) humour and a healthy dose of scepticism towards the “supposed” supernatural events. I enjoyed it and appreciated the author’s creative style (and footnotes!) but other than his style, I don’t think this book is going to be all too memorable for me, personally. The writing style – which was so necessary and appropriate when trying to emulate true-crime books – just made it hard for me to connect with any individual character. That’s a Me-problem though.

Thriller x Pseudo True-Crime x Supernatural

(I received a free copy of this through NetGalley for the purpose of an honest review)

The cover of this book along with the title drew me in, but the story itself is even better! What a fun unique mash up of horror, true crime, and comedy…weird but it totally works! I loved it!

I have never read anything by Daniel Kraus until now, and this book drew me in because of the cover. Then I read the synopsis and I was hooked. I am a lover of horror and true crime, and I loved how this fiction book did both justice. It is written like a true crime book along with footnotes (IT IS FICTION), and that was the biggest thing that drew me to the book. It had me looking at ghost and fast food places a lot differently now. I highly recommend this book to lovers of horror or even horror comedy cause this had me laughing. I have put all of Daniel Kraus' other books on my ever growing TBR.

Thank you Netgalley, Raw Dog Screaming Press and Daniel Kraus for letting read and review this awesome book.

OH MY GOSH - this book was amazing. At the start I couldnt figure out if this was a true crime piece of non fiction from the way it was written but it is actually a novel kind of disguised as true crime non fiction and I was totally there for it. It was an incredible read that explored, true crime, ghosts and food, in particular fast food, all with a element of humour and I LITERALLY could not put it down. I loved it.

In the mood for a horror comedy that takes on crime AND the fast food industry? Then check out The Ghosts That Ate Us by Daniel Kraus. This story is about a fast food joint called Burger Time located in Iowa. Since I did my undergraduate degree in Decorah, IA I had no problem visualizing this setting. The teenaged employees in this book brought me down memory lane of the jobs I held as a teen...with a more horrific twist.

The premise of this book is very original! I was lured in by the true crime ghost story and found it entertaining. Written as though it were non fiction, it even includes footnotes! While the style of writing may make some readers to really believe this reality, it IS a novel. Fans of Grady Hendrix will definitely appreciate this style of humor. I certainly enjoyed this fictional escapade into the horrors of fast food.