Haunt

De: Laura Lee Bahr

Narrado por: Laura Lee Bahr, Kerr Seth Lordygan, Jeremy Broomfield, Cody Goodfellow

Haunt is a tripping-balls Los Angeles noir, where a mysterious dame drags you through a time-warping bizarro hall of mirrors. She's the girl of your dreams - too bad she's dead. Or, is she?

In Haunt, "you" are the hapless corporate tool and rock star wannabe turned private dick. Here, even your most inconsequential choices can make all the difference between a Hollywood ending on the beach and sucking cock for clues.

This is genial lowbrow high-lit weirdness: the funny, punchy cousin of Danielewski's House of Leaves, a Vonnegut and Salinger paté on a choose-your-own cracker, with a lap dance from Nancy Drew. As much fun to make as it is to eat! Laura Lee Bahr is an award-winning indie actor/playwright/screenwriter with a gift for the hilariously, tragically absurd. Haunt is her first novel.

©2011 Laura Lee Bahr (P)2014 Laura Lee Bahr

"100% Different!!"

Any additional comments?

I have never read a ghost story quite like this. It took me a bit to get into it. But I'm glad I didn't give up. This book is one that you have to listen to closely and follow along because if you don't you will be lost! The narration was fantastic! I would recommend this book to anyone that is looking for something way out there and different.

This audiobook was provided to me for an honest review.

More than just an audiobook

I go through about two audiobooks a week while working my day job, and nothing I've listened to so far even remotely compares to what the folks at Fungasm cooked up with HAUNT. This is more than your average audiobook production, it's a complete theatrical performance administered through an aural hallucinogen. I know this sounds a little hyperbolic, but I can honestly say that no other audiobook so far has drawn me in so completely and utterly as HAUNT. The sound effects, music, and cast work together in perfect synergy to create an audio experience as rich in texture and production as any Lynch film. Fungasm is consistently one-upping themselves in term of quality and sheer mad genius, and you would be doing yourself a great disservice if you didn't give HAUNT a listen. Your ear holes will thank you for it.

Bizarre....but good :)

This book is so original. I have never read anything like this, and really have no idea how to explain it! It messes with your mind, it's confusing, and at the same time you can't stop reading. As the story progressed, and I stopped thinking about it too much, it started to make more sense. The uniniqueness isn't in the story, it's in how it's told. The chapters switch between 3rd person, and 2nd person point of view. Which would be a mess in a lot of books, but somehow works in this one. I feel like this book is meant to be experienced in audiobook form. The storytelling would lose something in written form. I enjoyed this bizarre book, and I definitely recommend the audiobook version if you want to check it out!
I was provided this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

something that is completely different

First off, Haunt was totally different from anything I've ever read or listened to before. I am not really confident I can write an appropriate review for this. To start with, I am actually not sure I "got" it, if in fact there is anything to "get". It totally messed with my head. At 15% through, I was considering giving up because I was so baffled, but the writing style and the narration were so good, I had to keep going. However, I had to stop doing the usual activities one does when listening to audio books to focus simply on listening. I am really glad I did because by the half way mark, I was totally hooked.

Haunt is the story of three people, two male and one female. It's a story about a spirit (or a ghost?) and the mystery surrounding its death. It's written partly in third person perspective and partly in the second person, so You are involved. And You are given some choices (kind of). It's not chronological, so there are shifts in time and there are also shifts in perspectives. Sounds like chaos? Amazingly, the author, Laura Lee Bahr, really pulled it off, and the less I tried to figure it all out and the more I just went along with it, the more I enjoyed it. There were some laugh-out-loud moments, there was some sadness, there was some romance (kind of), there was mystery. It was mind bending.

Haunt is categorized as Bizzaro Fiction and won the 2011 Wonderland Book Award for Novel of the Year. It's Laura Lee Bahr's debut novel, and she narrates part of the audio book herself. She's a great writer, and she was also a brilliant narrator. The male narrators sounded very similar to me. They were excellent, no complaints at all, but I kept wondering whether voices that were a bit more distinguishable would have eased my confusion at times. There were no issues with the quality of the production. In fact, this was one of a few productions where I thought the sound effects and music were a useful addition rather than an annoyance. I've never listened to an audio book twice before, but I intend to with this one after I've got hold of a copy of the Kindle edition first (this would have been great as a Whyspersync).

I don't think Haunt is a book for everyone. There's strong language and some sex scenes. But if you are willing to try something that is completely different, totally surreal, dark but also really humorous, then you are in for a unique ride with this one.

Audiobook was provided for review the publisher.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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Unique, well written and highly entertaining

I have had this one on my tbr for a while now and when I saw that it had an audible companion, I snatched up the audio. It was the first time I used the Whispersync function, switching back and forth from reading to listening. It worked surprisingly well and I kind of dug it.

Laura Lee Bahr pens a weird one here. Shifting narrative perspectives, timelines and story threads - this should have been a total mess. It wasn’t. From the lead character “You” to a ghost, to an investigative reporter in love with a dead girl, this one is part horror/mystery/thriller. The summary describes it as “a tripping-balls Los Angeles noir, where a mysterious dame drags you through a time-warping Bizarro hall of mirrors." Not a bad description, but I almost didn’t read it because it sounded too “weird”. I wouldn’t categorize it as Bizarro at all, as that is sometimes a turn off for me, but I will say that it was very strange...in a good way. Sometimes during that audio I would switch to the text version and see how exactly it was formatted on the page. It must have been challenging for the narrators at times, however, they pretty much nailed it and managed not to stumble over some of the more unique writing formats.

Well done and highly entertaining. I enjoyed this one a lot and am glad I finally gave it a shot.

good, but didn't like the narration switching.

good book. I think reading it would had been more enjoyable. didn't like the constant change.

Certainly interesting and different but not my cup

Any additional comments?

An ok way to pass the time on my longer commutes but not my favorite. I can see the appeal and appreciate the good reviews from the folks who enjoyed it. I was captured to start but found myself zoning in and out as the story line went on. Not a good sign. A worthy sidetrack for a different kind of story but I wouldn't recommend it.

Agh. Worst book ever.

I don't ever remember being so bored and so uninterested in a story as I was with this one. The performance was fine but the story so bad I had a hard time finishing.