Ghost House is a short story collection by Sara Connell. The book begins with the titular story "The Ghost House," where a woman moves to a new house with her family at her husband's insistence, only to become increasingly neurotic, trying to balance her passion and personal life, leading to a dreadful outcome. In "Girls," a nightclub employee muses how people from the outside world view her life -- some as a subject of their fantasies, yet others who blame her for corrupting their men. In "Tarifa," a mother tells a cautionary tale from her past to her young daughter about how she and her friends dealt with a creep during a visit to Spain in their younger days. A young woman obsessed with celebrities uses her love for salad dressing to get somewhere she is not supposed to in "Salad."

If you're a fan of dark humor, horror, and unpredictable endings, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of Ghost House. Author Sara Connell tells some fascinating tales about women from a wide array of backgrounds haunted by the demons of their past and losing their minds to varying degrees. Every story follows a different protagonist trying to survive their circumstances by navigating their way through in their own unique ways. Each tale has something different to offer. With quirky and colorful characters whose personalities pop out of the pages, the stories are all the more riveting to read. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and highly recommend it to short story lovers.

Ghost House: Short Stories by Sara Connell is a collection of diverse and intriguing short stories. This collection has twelve tales with titles like Les Grenouilles, Terror, Girls, Unending Day, and Tarifa. The book unravels with Ghost House, a story of a newlywed couple eager to buy a haunted house, anticipating that its market value will increase soon enough. This is perhaps the only traditional ghost story in this collection. From surreal to intoxicating, Connell’s main protagonists are women from different backgrounds and ages. They have one thing in common in that they have intense and frightening stories. The complex characters range from high school girls that explore immortality, an author who wants to write about the ecosystem of wine and people, a couple on holiday in Prague ending up in a marionette theater, and neon signs that talk, among others.

Ghost House by Sara Connell is a haunting collection of scary stories that are provocatively not limited to ghost appearances and the like. The author has undoubtedly redefined the meaning of poltergeist in her first collection of short stories. Each main protagonist is tormented in various ways, and most stories blur the line between sanity, fantasy, and reality. In this anthology, Connell effectively questions the accepted truths her complex characters live by and juxtaposes them with magical elements that are made to appear commonplace. With ominous impassiveness, she delivers the chilling realities lurking behind the social facades that women regularly face. I highly recommend this book!