The Cabin on Souder Hill

By: Lonnie Busch

Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen

Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's Summary

Michelle and Cliff Stage bought their isolated vacation cabin in the mountains of North Carolina with hopes of repairing their 18-year marriage. But when Cliff disappears one night searching for the source of a mysterious light in the woods, Michelle’s life will change in unimaginable ways. After the sheriff’s department fails to find him, Michelle scrambles down the same dark mountainside alone, the strange, beckoning light her only guide. 

What she discovers is a cabin, identical to theirs, housing a life she barely recognizes - and a husband she hardly knows. Cliff is a changed man. Now caring and considerate, no longer a manipulative womanizer, he is also missing a finger. He claims that Cassie, their teenage daughter, is dead, killed in a car accident more than a year ago. Michelle knows that’s not possible - Cassie had phoned her from Atlanta only hours before. Even when shown Cassie’s grave, Michelle refuses to accept she’s gone.

Michelle wants her daughter and her life back, and the only clue to what has happened is a man named Pink. A real estate agent and the man who years earlier built Michelle and Cliff’s cabin, Pink was rumored to have killed his wife and buried her on the property, then vanished, never to be seen again. But in Michelle’s new reality, Pink and his wife still reside in town and Pink’s smile-splashed billboards are everywhere. 

To get back to the world where her daughter exists, Michelle must unravel the mystery of Pink while questioning her very reality - and her sanity. Haunting, atmospheric, and deeply thought-provoking, The Cabin on Souder Hill questions the very nature of our existence and the choices we make to form it.

©2020 Lonnie Busch (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

I Couldn't Even Finish This Story!

The more I listened to this story the more I pictured a 16-year-old boy with raging hormones, writing it! All Pink could think and talk about was sex and it seemed the story focused quite a bit on THAT. And the bad language was another annoying thing... After 6 hours of listening, I thought...where is this going??? Nowhere, so I turned it off...and the narrator! UGH!! One thing I did like is that it was a free audible or I would definitely want my money back.

Good Base to the story.

It starts okay goes a little dark then ends okay. There are a few twist and turns. I think it would have been better with a little less family drama and more paranormal. Not as dark and twisted as King closer to Koontz. Its a little long but it ended differently than I expected.

Great Mix of Genres

I loved this book. It brought me back to the days of Twin Peaks with its interesting characters and twisted circumstances. Mixed with a bit of dark sci-fi, witchcraft and David Lynchian weirdness, The Cabin on Souder Hill is a total winner. I couldn't break away from this novel.

5 Stars *****

Not what I expected

Way to much profanity and explicit sexual situations. Would have been ok without all of that

Bad Silly Absurd……but

This story was much too nuts to be good. Many times I was ready to quit….but I stuck it out. It actually became good for awhile. The plot takes you in a ride to Stephen King country, but SK ain’t home.

Bad narrator

This might be a fun story but I'll never know. I just can't endure the narrator's reading of the main character. She does most of the other characters fine but gets all "breathy" when narrating the story teller. It's not a good interpretation, VERY annoying and completely distracts from the entire story. Glad this was only included and I didn't have to waste a credit. Deleted.

👎👎Went Down Hill Fast😖

Ok, first with me personally...the narrator is a HUGE part of an audiobook.

Now, with that being said....
Sarah is NOT beneficial to this book AT ALL!!
Her constant lower tone & raspy voice when narrating is just WAY to annoying😠😫 & made it so so very hard to get lost in the story.
She then constantly draws her letter Rs & draws out the last word and letter of EVERY FREAKING sentence....Making it CRINGE worthy!😤😣

When she does the voices of people talking within the story she does not read that way, so I KNOW she does not have to sound the way she does throughout the ENTIRE story.🤬😤

If I could have just got past Sarah's voice I might have been able to finish, but she just absolutely killed my ability to attach to characters and get my imagination lost in the story, characters and plot.😖😩

If they rerecorded the book with a better narrator, then I would love to try listening to the story again.🤔

NO, I can not, could not & would not recommend the narrator!!😡😩

The story did have potential, so yes I can recommend the "BOOK" to read for yourself or with a different narrator.

Couldn’t finish

Nasally narration that really started to grate on my nerves. But the the worst part was the characters. Not even one of them was a likable character. Their lack of communication and refusal to listen to one another was infuriating.

Pretty ok

Y’all take a shot every time the word “queer” is said. You’ll die! Lol.😂😂😂😂 Good story, but I wish she would switch up the words.

HOT MESS EXPRESS - but entertaining enough for being free

Oh boy.
Let’s start by saying that I’m not easily offended - sex, cursing, etc - none of that will ever be enough for me to clutch my pearls and give up on a book.
That’s not the problem here.
The problem is that I couldn’t tell whether this author was actually going for a Twin Peaks vibe or if it was an accident. And if Twin Peaks vibe isn’t done REALLY WELL, and isn’t fully committed to…it’s just bad. You can’t half a$$ something like that. So I still really don’t know what the author was going for here.
I kept wondering if this book was actually written in the 1980’s and then just updated a bit to make it fit with modern times (cell phones, etc). Because I’m sorry, but no one talks like this. No 30 something person says “that’s queer” constantly, meaning “that’s weird” or “that’s odd”. No 30 something says “that’s vexing” all the time.
And there’s no way a person like the main female character in this book would be sooooo ignorant to the point that they have literally never heard of Wicca and can’t recognize a Pentagram. What?

I didn’t pay attention to who the author was until after I finished, and I guess I’m not surprised to see that it’s an older man. The female characters were ignorant and vapid, for the most part. The main male character was a disgusting pig….yet by the end of the book it’s clear that you’re supposed to be viewing him as that guy who is just “tough on the outside but soft on the inside”….I mean….sure, that almost worked. Almost. To make it really work, there needed to be more character development and less of a senseless barrage of revolting, misogynistic, objectifying and obsessing sexual actions and thoughts. That also could have even worked a little better if it was actually interesting, nuanced, and well written. There needed to be some explanation for why Pink is such an animal with no redeeming qualities that are enough to make up for the rest of him. And some acknowledgement by his mother as to his character…instead it’s like she barely notices he’s such a garbage human. Make it make sense.

There were a lot of plot holes or places where the author relied on extremely vague explanations to avoid having to really properly create the existence these characters are inhabiting.

I can actually see this working well as a film script where solid acting and directing would sort of fill in the gaps and develop the characters in a way that makes more sense. Like, I can kind of see what he was trying to do with Pink, but it just didn’t work.

It’s frustrating to me that this book was published the way it was when it seemed really obvious what needed to be re-worked, and it could have been so much better.

I would encourage this author to spend more time around younger people if he wants to write younger characters that are believable.