The Kari AnnAlysis

Nellie meets the man of her dreams in Hobbs Pritchard. Her mama wants her to take it slow, but Nellie is afraid that if she doesn’t marry Hobbs when he asks, no one else will want her. But when she gets to Hobbs’ home on Black Mountain, everything changes. The stories about Hobbs are too unbelievable to be true, even though she sees the ghosts of Hobbs’ past. And soon, Nellie knows if she doesn’t take her life in her own hands, she’ll be a ghost of Black Mountain as well. What she doesn’t know is that by keeping her decision a secret, she’ll transform the lives of many and those ghosts may never let her be peaceful.

Ghost on Black Mountain is told through the lives of five women. I normally love when books do this because I really appreciate an author that can write in so many different voices and weave their stories together. During this book, I didn’t feel this way. I loved Nellie’s story from the beginning and didn’t want to hear from anyone else. But I passed judgement too soon. By the time I got done with the book, I understood why the different voices were needed and it worked beautifully.

Sometimes when you go to choose a book, you don’t know what it is, but something draws you to a book and you just have to read it. That’s how this book was with me. When I started looking up titles from the August Simon & Schuster Galley Grab letter. I am a fan of ghost stories and when I saw this cover and read the summary, I had to read it. And boy am I glad that I did.

In no way, shape, or form is that a romantic love story beneath the ghostly exterior. It is everything of a tragic, terrifying story of the ghosts that haunt your past and how your decisions can make a ghost of yourself. But this story, in all of it’s tragedy is beautiful and one I want to read over and over again.

There’s a lot of books that when you finish them, you have to sit and think, “What is the big picture?”. With this one, I knew before the book was even through and it’s one that I’ll keep with me, with this book in the back of my mind. There are some decisions in your life that you will have to make. They won’t necessarily be the most legal in Nellie’s case or most moral, for that matter, but they’re the ones you have to make to survive. But after you make those decisions, they stay with you. In Nellie’s case, for decades, she kept those decisions with her. They were her ghosts. And they came back to haunt her because the people that should have known about her ghosts were kept in the dark. There are some stories that may hurt to tell, but they’re ones you have to let people in on. If someone loves you, they will accept you, no matter your story.

I give Ghost on Black Mountain 5 bookmarks. And as always when I read a book I love, I look for more books by the author that I may also love. When I started searching for more Ann Hite books, I hit gold. There is a PDF file of stories from Black Mountain online. I started reading them, in the middle of writing this review, and got so sidetracked I forgot I was writing. Woops. I can’t wait to learn more about Black Mountain so I am cutting this review short

ISBN: 9781451606423
Released Date: September 13, 2011
Author Website
Kari got this book from Simon & Schuster Galley Grab

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