White Smoke

By: Tiffany D. Jackson

Narrated by: Marcella Cox

Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

The Haunting of Hill House meets Get Out in this chilling YA psychological thriller and modern take on the classic haunted house story from New York Times best-selling author Tiffany D. Jackson!

Marigold is running from ghosts. The phantoms of her old life keep haunting her, but a move with her newly blended family from their small California beach town to the embattled Midwestern city of Cedarville might be the fresh start she needs. Her mom has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation that comes with a free house, one that Mari now has to share with her bratty 10-year-old stepsister, Piper.

The renovated picture-perfect home on Maple Street, sitting between dilapidated houses, surrounded by wary neighbors has its...secrets. That’s only half the problem: household items vanish, doors open on their own, lights turn off, shadows walk past rooms, voices can be heard in the walls, and there’s a foul smell seeping through the vents only Mari seems to notice. Worse: Piper keeps talking about a friend who wants Mari gone.

But “running from ghosts” is just a metaphor, right?

As the house closes in, Mari learns that the danger isn’t limited to Maple Street. Cedarville has its secrets, too. And secrets always find their way through the cracks.

An Amazon Best Book of the Month

Parade's Best YA Books of the Year

Indigo Best Books of the Year

SLJ Best Books of the Year

Kirkus Best Books of the Year

A YALSA Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults Book of the Year

©2021 Tiffany D. Jackson (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

Fantastic

Everyone’s taste is different. I am into wonderful stories and I drive long hours and this was absolutely fantastic! I finished it in two days because I could not stop listening to her voice and what she did with all of the sounds in the book and the characters fantastic. I hope there is another book in this becomes a series because it was really good.

White Smoke

This was a good listen/read. I would like to know what happened after the fires. I only listen at work so I was rushing in here to finish the book lol

Unexpected

This was a good read looking forward to other books by this author hopefully there is a follow up to this story!

3.5 Stars but rounded up to 4

So the first book by Tiffany D Jackson I listened to was the Weight of Blood and that was phenomenal! I loved the narrators and the story. So I had high hopes for this one.

First off, I think I might have enjoyed this book a bit more if I had read it instead of listened to it. The narrator has a nice voice, but sometimes she spoke so quietly I would have to turn my volume way up and then she’d get really loud and I’d have to go back down. So the constant need to adjust the volume took away a bit from the story.

Second, I get what Mari’s friends were saying about giving Piper some slack and yes she had been through a lot, but so had Mari and while I get that she’s older, I think they were giving Piper a bit too much leeway for her actions. I also disliked how her stepdad clearly favored his own daughter and Mari’s mom just kind of let it go.

Third, the character changes and development and them all coming together as a family towards the end just felt a bit forced and rushed. Like nothing really showed this change happening, it just did.

Finally, the twist was a good one and I loved it, but that ending, I hated. It just felt too abrupt. I am good w an ambiguous ending if it’s done right, like in The Weight of Blood, but this wasn’t ambiguous. There just wasn’t really an ending.

sat in the car in a parking lot at 5am to finish

Really enjoyed the narrator. The story was solid the characters were believable. This is light years better than the last YA horror I listened too, heck better than the last "adult" horror I listened to, I liked these characters and cares what happened.

Ending was ..ehh

The story was great ,but the end was anticlimactic. I would still recommend though

Well-written, not scary

I devoured Tiffany D Jackson’s first two books ALLEGEDLY and MONDAY’S NOT COMING reading both multiple times. Though GROWN was well-executed, I didn’t embrace it as much as if I had been the target audience. I didn’t enjoy WHITE SMOKE and thought it didn’t equal Jackson’s other masterpieces. Perhaps she set the bar too high for herself.

Told from Marigold’s first person POV (pronounced Marry-gold by the Audible narrator), the MC, a teen mentally ill with the anxiety disorders OCD and PTSD wasn’t sympathetic to me. She self medicates psychological issues with marijuana, though not effectively.

WHITE SMOKE, Jackson’s first horror novel, never felt scary, though the bed-bug phobia was creepy. This could be due to narration, but I’m not sure if the written version would have been more chilling. I did fully believe that Marigold was as afraid as the reader was supposed to feel, but I chalked that up more to her mental than to universal scariness.

WHITE SMOKE. like all Jackson’s books, is extremely well-written.

Not a great horror novel...

It was alright. It centers on a teenager and her life fitting into a new place and that seemed to be the primary focus. The horror beats were few and far between. Characterization was good, though. Would definitely recommend to readers of young adult/teen stories but not horror fans.

Not what I expected

The story was pretty good. Nice twist for the end but the story kinda fell flat for me. I do like the various messages each character gave to the story.

Tiffany D. Jackson does it again!

I absolutely LOVED this book! The right mix of spooky and plausible to make the story engaging. I finished the story in 2 days! I couldn’t put it down. Tiffany D. Jackson never disappoints.