Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars**
Episode Thirteen sounded perfect to me and while there were quite a few things I enjoyed about the story, it was a bit of a mixed bag for me.
I took some time to process my experience with this one before I even attempted to write a review. I was so disappointed initially, but I wouldn’t say that would be a fair assessment of all my time with this book.
I think a lot of the disappointment may have stemmed from me building this one up so much in my mind ahead of time. I set my own unrealistically high expectations, if you will.
This story follows a ghost hunting reality tv crew. Quick side note about me, I have been so into ghost hunting YouTube lately. It’s like my go-to late night viewing, so I was super pumped that DiLouie was bringing some of that to the page.
I listened to the audiobook and I do feel like this story lends itself well to that medium. The audio production was very well executed and I would recommend it.
But while I really enjoyed the audio production, I wouldn’t say I ever really connected with the story overall.
Halfway through, I wouldn’t have even been able to tell you the name of the property they were exploring. I also had a difficult time keeping track of some of the male characters. They all seemed like carbon copies to me in the moment.
And even though I celebrate the over-arching vibe of the book, once we got to the crux of the story, it lost me. It reminded me a lot of both Hide and These Fleeting Shadows.
By this I mean, that a certain plot device was used in all three to sort of explain the nature of the places/settings of each of these stories.
It didn’t work for me in either of those cases and it didn’t work for me here either. The thing is none of the synopsis indicates this is where these stories would go, so there’s no actual way to avoid it. Sorry about it, but it’s true.
At the end of the day, even though I wasn’t dazzled by this one, I would absolutely continue picking up more stories by DiLouie. You can’t win ’em all.