Mishel Reviews: Suburban Legends - Sam Stall

 Mishel Reviews

Series or Stand Alone: Stand Alone

Release Date: October 2013 (First published August 2006) 

Publisher: Quirk Books

Pages: 240 (ebook)

Author Site: 

My Rating: 2.5/5 

Source: Received for review from publisher

Cover: Thumbs down, although the ebook cover is far better than the original paperback cover. 

Its a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood

They told you the suburbs were a great place to live. They said nothing bad could ever happen here.

But they were wrong.

This collection of terrifying true stories exposes the dark side of life in the ’burbs—from corpses buried in backyards and ghosts lurking in fast food restaurants to UFOs, vanishing persons, bizarre apparitions, and worse. Consider:

     •  The Soccer Mom’s Secret. Meet Melinda Raisch of Columbus, Ohio. She’s the wife of a dentist. A mother of three. A PTA member. And she has enough murderous secrets to fill a minivan.

     •  Noise Pollution. More than 100 residents of Kokomo, Indiana, claim their small town is under attack by a low-pitched humming sound that erodes health and sanity. Too bad they’re the only ones who can hear it.

     •  Death Takes a Holiday inn. There’s nothing more reassuring than a big chain hotel in a quaint small town—unless it’s the Holiday Inn of Grand Island, New York, where you’ll spend the night with the spirit of a mischievous little girl.  

So lock your doors, dim the lights, and prepare to stay up all night with this creepy collection of true tales. We promise you’ll never look at white picket fences the same way again!

Review:

I can’t really recall what I was expecting out of Suburban Legends when I agreed to review it. I don’t remember it sinking in to my brain that the stories within were true tales of the “dark side” of suburban life. (Depsite that being said right in the beginning of the synopsis… DUH! *smacks head*) I must have been thinking this was going to be a cool, fictional anthology filled with strange but equally as entertaining tales of the oddities that can occur in Suburbia. Uhhh, no…

Granted some of these stories were entertaining, creepy, and weird but I really lost interest a time or two while reading it. The stories include ghost sightings/hauntings, UFO encounters, monsters, random mysterious happening, and even murder. I admit I was more interested in the murder stories than anything else. I didn’t like how there was really no atmosphere to the book. I know it was a hodge-podge of true facts but I could have seen the exact same thing on a television show or browsing the internet. The only difference in doing that was all these stories were already put together for me…but there was no real storytelling; just a “wham-bam-thank-you-mam” kind of spread. *shrugs* Am I too picky here?

The book is quick, light, and an easy read. The re-release in ebook format is great for the upcoming Halloween season. There is a definite audience for Suburban Legends…it’s the same audience who can watch haunted ghost or urban legend TV shows all the time. I had fun but not enough to really want to go through it again.....