Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones

By: Micah Dean Hicks

Narrated by: Jennifer O'Donnell

Swine Hill was full of the dead. Their ghosts were thickest near the abandoned downtown, where so many of the town's hopes had died generation by generation. They lingered in the places that mattered to them, and people avoided those streets, locked those doors, stopped going into those rooms.... They could hurt you. Worse, they could change you.

Jane is haunted. Since she was a child, she has carried a ghost girl that feeds on the secrets and fears of everyone around her, whispering to Jane what they are thinking and feeling, even when she doesn't want to know. Henry, Jane's brother, is ridden by a genius ghost that forces him to build strange and dangerous machines. Their mother is possessed by a lonely spirit that burns anyone she touches. In Swine Hill, a place of defeat and depletion, there are more dead than living.

When new arrivals begin scoring precious jobs at the last factory in town, both the living and the dead are furious. This insult on the end of a long economic decline sparks a conflagration. Buffeted by rage on all sides, Jane must find a way to save her haunted family and escape the town before it kills them.

©2019 Micah Dean Hicks (P)2019 Recorded Books

just ok

It's a stretch to put this under the 'horror' category. It's an interesting story, but don't expect horror. It put me in the mind more of 'Something Wicked this Way Comes' or the old RL Stine books, those are things I read in elementary school though. The story was pretty thin and not what I expected. It's an interesting listen, just not what I expected, seems a lot more young adult than horror.

Interesting ideas for a younger audience then me.

When I started listening to this book I had high hopes. I liked the idea(s.) The problem is, a book about young adults having young adult issues and living young adult lives is pretty much a book for young adults. It doesn't matter WHAT setting you put them into or what plots you make them navigate. I need more out of a book. I need adults leading adult lives and doing adult things. There are a few exceptions, but this book isn't one of them.

Wonderful

Brilliant, beautifully written, and totally engrossing. Loved the main character, and found the story's denouement totally satisfying. Perfect narration, too. Very excited to read the author's next work (hope he works with Ms. O'Donnell again, too!).

No. Just no.

I started off with high hopes. The premise was interesting, a town where everyone was haunted, people had their own personal ghost or ghosts and they interacted. They introduced a pig which had somehow been turned into a man like thing, which was not pleasant but OK. I could go with it. Then things started going down hill, becoming more unpleasant, hearing the words became more uncomfortable. and when they had a human woman having sex with the pig man, that was simply enough. I didnt want to read hear any more. More and more of it was simply cringe inducing grossness. It was like looking at those horrible displays of dead bodies, cut open and preserved. I dont want to look at that. I think that wasnt a town at all. I think everyone there was dead and that town was hell. The ghosts were demons to torture them through eternity. I will not be reading anything else by this writer.