A review by vanmeers
The Last Haunt by Max Booth III

dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Last Haunt introduces us to McKinley Manor, an extreme haunted house, and the horrific events that closed it down forever through a series of written interviews with people associated with Gus McKinley and his haunted house in the town of Pork Basket. 

I’m a huge fan of interview style books and The Last Haunt is written to be just that: an almost true crime‘esque written documentary that tries to uncover what happened during the McKinley Manor massacre on Halloween night. It’s hugely entertaining, eerie and the characters feel fully fleshed out — you’ve got a lot of down to earth characters that you can fully imagine being interviewed for a real documentary and just like real life, you can never really be sure who’s telling the truth. 

This novella is also obviously a huge nod towards the very real “extreme haunted house” of a similar name and a critique on the loose definition of the ‘haunted’ part when it’s mostly just unsupervised torture. 

The Last Haunt was a lot of fun to read and a breeze to get through. It’s definitely a perfect October read — not too scary, but definitely full of suspense and unhinged moments with a lot of recognisable names from the horror community. 

// ARC received through BookSirens.