4.5 Stars. S.A. Barnes has done it again! Ghost Station is a creepy, unsettling space horror that will keep you guessing.

Dr. Ophelia Bray has committed her life to studying/preventing ERS, a condition that can lead to violence and self-harm. Ophelia thinks it’s necessary to help patients on board spacecraft rather than treat then when they return home, so she volunteers to join the crew of Resilience who has just lost a member due to suspected ERS. The crew lands on Lyria 393-C to explore and document any changes to the planet. Immediately, Ophelia feels a sense of wrongness as they set up at the ghost station.

I loved how creepy this book was. Setting was key here and Barnes really created an unsettling environment where it was impossible to feel safe. Whether inside the ghost station or exploring the planet you just don’t get a respite. There was also quite a bit of body horror! It was done well and quite gross, which I am a fan of. One of the things that kept this from being a true 5 star is that I found the plot a bit slow to start. Once the action started picking up I couldn’t put it down.

This is my first audiobook from this narrator and I am a huge fan! She did such a great job of conveying the eeriness and feelings of dread. I was fully engaged the whole way through.

I really liked this author’s first novel, Dead Silence, but I think this one was even better. I’ll definitely read from this author again and can’t wait for their next novel. Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for a review copy.

When Dr. Ophelia Bray has a chance to travel with a small group of explorers to an abandoned facility that her family used to own, in order to further her study of ERS, she was warned away by her relatives, but couldn't know the true reason that they didn't want her to go.

I appreciated that the characters were so different from one another, and I liked the interactions between them. Especially the potential of a romance between Ophelia and the commanding officer of the crew. I appreciated how, in the course of the book, the relationship between Ophelia and the crew progresses from a us vs them perspective to a more unified understanding of what they were going through together. I found Ophelia frustrating in the beginning of the book however. Her lack of communication with the people who needed the information, and how in all of the years since she changed her name, she was convinced that she would go to jail for it, when it happened when she was a child, was a bit difficult for me to understand.

I really wanted to rate this five stars because the story is really good. However, I have a hard time with the pace of the book, it is definitely on the slow side. This is mainly due to the author exploring / discussing whats going on in the characters head. The story is centered around preventing ERS which is essentially a form of PTSD that causes a phychotic break in the person, causing them to act crazy, kill people, or even go into a chatatonic state.

Overall, the deep dive into mental health while showing us a glimpse at space, exploration, and ancient alien civilizations was fascinating. All that mixed with some human politics/corporations makes for very interesting backstory. I would love to see more in this universe. As I mentioned above, my only complaint was the pace, if the pace would’ve been a little bit faster Would be jumping up and down, and screaming about this book from the rooftops. However, that being said, I definitely still recommend checking this book out. Just go into it knowing that you’re going to read a book with slower pace.

Also, thank you NetGalley for the ALC

I really loved S.A. Barnes Dead Silence so decided to pick this up as well. I really enjoyed the narrator and the world building in this novel but felt the story line was just a little flat. If you enjoy heavy sci-fi with a little horror in it, I'd still suggest giving this a try. The narrator does a fantastic job of keeping me engaged so I would also highly suggest checking out the audiobook version.

This was so creepy & I really enjoyed the narration. Space horror is like an entire genre on its own (it really should be) and I was thoroughly entertained. I thought the character growth was great & the plot and storyline were developed well. This was an exciting, chilling, and atmospheric.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan audio for this ALC!

This is my first S.A. Barnes novel and I am a fan.

In the unspecified future, space exploration is a huge money making endeavor and there are two corporations that basically own the market. ERS is a space base condition that can lead to disaster and is a death sentence for someone's career. There's a famous case that ended with the brutal murders of 29 people and since, it's something that nobody wants to be associated with. Dr. Ophelia Bray is a psychologist that specifically works in the study and prevention of ERS in those that work in the space exploration field. After Ophelia experiences a work-related tragedy she decides to take her expertise on site. She's assigned to a crew that also has had a tragedy among them and soon finds herself in space with a group of people that clearly don't trust her or want her there. As they get to the planet they will be exploring things start to get odd - the previous crew clearly made a hasty exit from the planet. Then a member of the crew is found dead in a gruesome way and things go from odd to a nightmare. The crew must work together to find out what is going on but when everyone has secrets it's hard to know who to trust - especially when you might not even be able to trust yourself.

This book has layers! Set in the future it immediately gets you acclimated to this futuristic world. Though it's futuristic there are a lot of parallels to present day so it's easy to connect to. Dr. Ophelia Bray is the FMC that has layers herself. As you get to know her background, family, and motivations you get more questions surrounding Ophelia. Not only has Ophelia experienced a tragedy, the team she is assigned to has as well. This has left the team on edge and even more reluctant to trust Ophelia since psychologists can end someone's career without even meaning to. Any mention of ERS or symptoms that could lead to ERS can easily put someone out of work in the space exploration field.

ERS itself is interesting. It reminds me of PTSD but stemming more from isolation instead of trauma. Which space would be pretty isolating I would think. How S.A. Barnes creates this whole mental illness into the book was so interesting and gave the book more tension. The motivation behind Ophelia's study of it is also so intriguing, though that's part of the mystery of Ophelia that you learn about as the book goes on. Every character is interesting; there are things that make you like them or hate them but every one of them had me wondering what they're hiding.

Overall the book is a great blending of sci-fi and horror. There's some body horror along with thriller vibes. Also, if you don't trust big corporations and those that run it this book won't make you feel hopeful for the future.

The audiobook edition was easy to listen to but wasn't super entertaining. The narrator did a pretty good job but narrated in a pretty even tone even when scenes were a bit more action packed. I enjoy a good even toned narrator but I think this book deserved a bit more excitement. However, I want to say that I don't think the narrator was boring or hard to listen to. I just found that reading the ebook allowed me to do some scenes more justice rather than listening to the audiobook.

Zura Johnson is one of my absolute favorites and her voice is the perfect choice for this creepy sci-fi horror! Sultry and dripping with honey, I heard “Where are you, Little Bird” in my nightmares. 😱

This is my first S A Barnes book and I immediately ordered Dead Silence when I finished! As a new reader of Science Fiction, I loved the slower pace, atmosphere building, and horror aspects of the story. The science is definitely sciency but the author explained it all so well throughout! Common issues many people deal with daily such as sleep deprivation and PTSD are main plot points which make the problems facing the main characters more realistic.

Dr. Ophelia Bray is a sleep psychologist who dedicates her time to studying and preventing ERS, which previously caused the murder of 29 people. She joins a small crew on their journey to explore an abandoned planet to test some new theories on sleep. The crew continues to find things out of place and realizes something is definitely wrong. When their pilot is gruesomely murdered, they’ve got to figure out if ERS is affecting the crew or if something more sinister is happening.

I was entirely glued to this story and finished the audiobook in a day. If you’re a fan of creepy slow-burn horror, definitely add this one to your list!

The risky thing about loving a debut author’s first work is falling into the pitfall of assuming you’ll love every work after. And unfortunately I cannot say this is true from S.A. Barnes and their second novel Ghost Station. I so completely loved their debut Dead Space that assumed another sci-fi horror novel from them was sure to hit me the same way.

Unfortunately, this second novel tries to tackle a lot of what made the author’s debut so intriguing - a main character with an unknown trauma their background, a ragtag crew trying to piece together a rapidly unraveling situation while they’re stranded in space. But everything felt a bit lackluster or worn out by other books and films in the same genre - particularly the use of some unidentified microorganism potentially causing an illness among the crew. That has been done and DONE. And the overarching corporate big bad - we’ve seen it time and again.

The main character also was a particular painful narrator to have to endure. For being a psychologist, she’d seemed to hyperfocus on herself and how everyone in the crew linked back to her, rather than try and show actual empathy for the people she was tasked to help.

Birch is the only memorable character in the book, at least the only one that felt like he was giving the narrative any stakes or tension just among the cast of characters. But he’s not a major presence for most of the book. And as soon as he leaves the entire story seems to teeter this line between psychological thriller and sci-fi action flick without ever fully committing to both.

It almost makes me look back on the author’s first work and ask - did I like it because of the writing and storytelling or would I have enjoyed any kind of story pitched as “Titanic in space?” I’ll probably never know, but I do think I’ll at least check out the next work from S.A. Barnes - just to confirm which was the fluke: the memorable debut or underwhelming follow up.

Thank you to the publisher Macmillan Audio for providing an audiobook ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

It's been a while since I've read a good horror novel, and Ghost Station was what I needed. It gave me "The Deep" by Nick Cutter vibes, which is one of my favorite horror novels. I've read Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes, and while that one is my favorite of the two, I still really enjoyed Ghost Station. I'll definitely be picking up whatever comes next from S.A. Barnes!

Rating: 3.86 leaves out of 5
-Characters: 3/5
-Cover: 5/5
-Story: 4/5
-Writing: 5/5
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Scifi, Space, Thriller
-Horror: 1/5
-Mystery: 3.75/5
-Scifi: 5/5
-Space: 5/5
-Thriller: 3/5
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: Eh

Want to thank Netgalley and publishers for giving me the chance to read this book.

If you have read Dead Silence before this book you will see a lot of similarities between the both of them. It is almost like the characters were recycled, but that being said it wasn't a bad story. I liked the concept of it and was really wanting to read and find out where things were going. The ending was okay. I actually wanted more for a couple characters but I suppose it is fine where we are left off. It was a good book in terms that it wasn't really bad but kind of flat.

Ghost Station is the new entry in space horror by this horror and I definitely liked it better than the first book. I am fascinated by the concept of space travel and exploration, and love the idea that we are not alone out there and those who are out there are not always welcoming and may be far superior to us. Space exploration can be deadly, yes, but it can also be lonely as well as exciting. You have to depend on others to survive so what happens when you don't necessarily have confidence in others on your team?

The story revolves around Ophelia, the ship's psychologist, who is sent to assess the mental well-being of the crew on an isolated planet where one of their crew mates has died. Wanting to do good, she is surprised when she is given the cold shoulder as the crew understands that a poor evaluation could get them sent home and make them unemployable. Ophelia is a bit of a mess during this book and I enjoyed her journey as she explored the impact her past had on her choices and her behaviour, but the fact she is ignorant of the impact she could have on the crew mates blows me away. She constantly talks about how different she is from her family, but doesn't really consider the implications of why she is sent there in there in the first place.

The first half of the book is quite slow as it deals a lot with Ophelia and her family and the secrets she has kept from everyone; there is so much going on in her head that it sometimes becomes repetitive. It's not that the introspection wasn't interesting, but it has to balance more with the action and this didn't happen until the second half of the book. A lot of the information was important to the second half of the book, but you had to be really patient for the action to start happening.

As mentioned previously, the plot was quite slow in the beginning, but I did enjoy the build-up of the tension. It revolved mainly around Ophelia's issues and whether what she was seeing was real or not as well as the issues she was having with other crew mates. I listened to the audiobook as well as read an ARC kindle version, and I really enjoyed the audiobook. Zura Johnson did a great job narrating the book and the other crew members were easily distinguishable. Personally, I preferred the audiobook.

Once the action picked up in the second half, it was good and there was a big secret to be revealed, something I already suspected. I wish the author had kept up this kind of tension and pace throughout the novel as the last quarter was the best of the book.

Ghost Station was an improvement for me as I DNF the last one, but it did get bogged down in the first half with too much introspection. With such an intriguing narrative, I wish the author had balanced the mental health aspects of doing such a job with the action a bit more as I felt like they were two separate things in this book. I definitely enjoyed it, and am looking forward to reading more by this author in the future. And I will also be searching for more by this narrator as well.

S.A. Barnes has such a unique style of using space as a backdrop for horror that is really related to people and the secrets that they keep.

The audio production on this novel was amazing, and it was rightly one of my most anticipated reads (or listens) this year. Ophelia's character was well developed and relatable, even though she came from such a notorious family / background and was working against their wishes. It was also really interesting to have a perspective on the characters as they were on the ship after the death of Ava, but before they arrived at the planet they were investigating, and seeing how their behaviours changed with added stress.

Really enjoyed the narration of this audiobook and found it to be really engaging! Set the book up for a good, sinking / creepy feeling throughout.

3.5 stars.

Ghost Station by S. A. Barnes - With how disappointed I was with Dead Silence(was hoping for more space horror, not humanity horror) I lowered the bar going into this one. It wasn't bad, not at all. But I'm starting to think I'm not a fan of these quiet horror kind of books, or maybe I just wasn't in the right mood. Either way, it was well written, and I enjoyed it, just not for the horror aspect.

This audiobook is narrated by Zura Johnson

•Thank you to @macmillan.audio

Love these chilling, atmospheric adventures into the unknown. The vastness of space and the exploration of new planets leaves a lot of room for imagination into mishaps and horrifying situations. Ophelia Bray wants to be a trailblazer in space. She signs up for a mission that will help her do just that and keep her past a secret. As her and her crewmates arrive on the planet, all is not as it initially seemed. The previous crew seemed to have left in one hell of a hurry and as Ophelia dives deeper into why, things begin to go wrong. Who can you trust if everyone has their own secret to keep? The audio production of this novel was amazing. I enjoyed the narration immensely. Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for allowing me to listen to this novel in exchange for my honest review.

The description lures me with the promise of deep space mystery, and it delivers accordingly. Unfortunately, my luck and taste didn’t allow me to enjoy it as much as I’d hoped. Each chapter included an overly complicated and unnecessary description of… well, I cannot recall precisely what. The book felt needlessly convoluted. We didn’t have a chance to truly get to know the side characters; instead, the repetitive thoughts of the protagonists took center stage. Speaking of the main character, at times, it seemed like crucial information was intentionally withheld, while other times, it was simply delayed. As a supposed doctor of psychology, she lacked substantial knowledge in the field. I had hoped for intriguing analyses involving futuristic psychological concepts, but they were disappointingly absent. Furthermore, her ability to read others fell short; empathy seemed elusive to her, while she remained fixated on appearances and the environment. Perhaps she wasn’t that kind of doctor after all. Despite these shortcomings, my curiosity about the crew’s fate kept me engaged until the end. In the grand scheme of things, this story feels like an acquired taste—a niche subgenre for those who specifically enjoy this type of science fiction.”

I absolutely LOVED Dead Silence, so I knew as soon as I saw Ghost Station was being published that I needed to request it and I am so glad that I did! I love that the setting is in space and traveling to different planets. I feel like it just adds a different element to the story and creates a more terrifying atmosphere! This one was a little more of a slow burn compared to Dead Silence, but once it got going, it really got going and I didn’t want to put it down! I absolutely loved the narrator! I felt like she was able to keep my attention span throughout this audio book more so than the ebook did. If you enjoy science fiction or even darker science fiction, then I think this will be one that you will enjoy!

I really enjoyed this slow burn, tense sci fi novel until the very end, which left me deeply unsatisfied. But overall, the characters, concepts, and world-building were well done and kept my attention throughout.

Thank you to S.A. Barnes, NetGalley and MAcmillan Audio for this Audio Arc in exchange for an honest review!

Wow! I loved this, it was fantastic. The Narrator did a fantastic job giving the characters distinct voices. The begining of the book was a little slow, but once this picked up it didn't stop. This was the perfect Space Mystery/Horror/Thriller.

The Good
After Dead Silence, I think this type of SF Horror might be my favorite. I love the combination of horror, adventure, and science fiction. Many of the characters were awesome, some starting off that way and others growing on me. At some point, the surly Suresh became my favorite. As a mostly SF/F reader, the ending was satisfying as was the relationship between the characters.

The Bad
The book starts off slow. It took me longer to get through the first third of the book than the remainder. It just drags. I think two things cause this, both of which are classified as...

The Ugly
First, the MC Ophelia is too introspective and whines constantly. Towards the end, it even started to cut through the tension of the events because it was all so repetitive or predictable (not the events themselves, just Ophelia in the events). I understand that she is a psychologist, but she is always so much more focused on herself and her history that it almost makes any time she cares about someone else seem like an act at first.

Second, and this is very subjective, but I hated the narration. It was soporific, which is not what I want in an audiobook of any kind but certainly not a horror audiobook. It also layered over the introspection in a way that just doubled the whining effect. The performance itself was fine, and the narrator has a lovely voice, but it's neither the kind of voice I want reading to me nor the kind of voice I want reading a book like this.

Also, Ophelia commits a classic SF/Horror blunder that made me facepalm at her stupidity... twice.

That said, I liked the book as a whole, don't feel like I wasted my time, and would totally recommend it to others

Initial Thoughts
I really had a good time with this book! I love that the story kept me guessing and I was never completely sure what was real. I liked all of the characters and really appreciated getting their backstories, especially that of Dr. Ophelia Bray. I listened to the audiobook and thought that the narrator did an excellent job with the narration.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Full review to be posted soon.