Book Review: Haunting Melody By Chloe Spencer

Failure is a sinister song. One that Melody Myere is all too familiar with.

The only child of an acclaimed ghost hunter couple, Melody’s First Sacred Hunt should have been a walk in the park. All she needed to do was catch a ghost, like she’s done all her life. But when an unexpected wraith showed up causing havoc, Melody was left scarred and embarrassed.

Suffering from depression and PTSD post-hunt, Melody relocates to the sleepy island town of Murkmore, where her parents have been tasked with capturing the ghost responsible for a series of grisly deaths. Determined to prove herself, and despite her parents' protests, Melody sets out to capture the specter on her own.

When a haunting song lures Melody to an abandoned theater, she encounters a recently deceased musical prodigy by the name of Cyrus. All signs point to Cyrus being the killer, but Melody isn’t so sure, suspecting something more discordant is afoot.

Haunted by more than just a sinister song, Melody must learn to trust her instincts to catch the killer and prove herself before it’s time to face the music.

This book had so many things I really liked, its spooky without being too scary, has a lot of fantastical creatures, and has versions of famous musicals that have named of fantasy creatures in them. I like the world seemed like ours, just with ghosts, ghost hunters, selkies and more. I would love to see how other creatures impact the world around this story. There is also a lot of representation, along with learning how to love yourself after a change or tragedy.

Melody goes through a lot in this book, which leads to PTSD, depression and eating to deal with those things. The eating ends up leading to her having her body image issues when they move to Murkmore. There are conversations between Melody and Cyrus where they talk about how she feels, and how Cyrus thinks she is beautiful no matter what. Though Melody still has work to do, she starts to see that just being herself isn't too bad. Melody also works through therapy to help with her PTSD and has to work through understanding why the events that lead to her scars happened. This means listening long enough to hear why, and also learning to forgive those who have hurt her. Melody also deals with more issues than just moving to a new, kind of horrible place, and ends up learning more secrets about her parents and their relationship with those around them.

There are a lot of lessons within this book that I think I really important, along with having a fun story to go with it. Melody meets Cyrus because she wants to prove herself to her parents, and instead finds a friend along the way. There are a lot of nerdy references, along with a great ghosthunter vibe. There is also a murder-mystery vibe to the book as well, with a chance for the murders to not only be committed by someone with Fantastical blood.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and the unique vibe it had throughout. There is a lot of queer rep, fat rep and poly rep within the book! Bonus points that Chloe Spencer is a local author to Minnesota!

I rated this book 4 out of 5 stars!

Goodreads

Haunting Melody comes out Oct 1, 2024!