REVIEWS

Reviews for the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series

This is a hard thing to keep track of. Most book blogs also post their reviews to Ama­zon and Good Reads and that’s where you can get the whole spec­trum of people’s opin­ions, from “I hated it” to “meh” to “I loved it” to “Best book ever Imma gonna die omg.”

Dark­house reviews

Good Reads
Amazon

Red Fox reviews

Good Reads
Amazon

The Ben­son reviews

Good Reads
Amazon

Dead Sky Morn­ing reviews

Good Reads
Amazon

Lying Sea­son reviews

Good Reads
Amazon

On Demon Wings reviews

Good Reads
Amazon

Other review blogs such as For­ever Young Adult and Maryse’s Book Blog don’t post to Good Reads or Ama­zon but you can read their respec­tive (and FUN!) reviews at their blogs by fol­low­ing the links above.

 

 

Here’s a sam­pling of some reviews, too:

REVIEWS FOR DARKHOUSE

”Have you ever heard the expres­sion “book hang­over”? Well, for me, a book hang­over hap­pens when you find a book that com­pletely con­sumes you. It is all you can think about, and you walk around in a stu­por for a few days. Guess what? That hap­pened to me when I read Dark­house.”Book­ish Babes

“A super thrill ride of a book. I devoured this book, seri­ously I did not want to put it down. I’m a big fan of ghost sto­ries and ghost hunt­ing in gen­eral so pick­ing this up was a no-brainer for me.”
Naughty Between the Stacks

“Enter Perry Palomino’s world and expect to be riv­eted to your seat with the creepy story with para­nor­mal over­tures. This book was a mes­mer­iz­ing read. At times, I found myself grip­ping the book tightly and turn­ing the pages with the light on. Creepy atmos­phere pre­vails in this story leav­ing goose­bumps in its wake.”Earth’s Book Nook

“Dark­house by Karina Halle has to be the first book in many years to make me glad to be read­ing dur­ing the day. It was creepy, excit­ing, hilar­i­ous and down right one of the most enter­tain­ing books that made me want to hug my pil­low.”See­ing Night Reviews

“Dark­house turned out unlike any­thing I’d expected. It drew me in from page one, with its easy-to-relate to, flawed but love­able char­ac­ters, its fast pace, the unpre­dictable plot twists and its eerie, sur­real atmos­phere. If you’re search­ing for the scari­est book of this sea­son, then search no more. Dark­house is exactly what you’re look­ing for.”
I Heart Reading

“With great lead char­ac­ters such as Perry and Dex, this was a book that was hard to put down. Halle puts an inter­est­ing and enter­tain­ing view within the para­nor­mal world filled with ghosts. I look for­ward to read­ing more from this author.”Liv­ing Life Through Books

“I loved Dark­house. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I can’t say it enough. I’ve never related to a char­ac­ter as much as I did to Perry Palomino.” - Pretty Opin­ion­ated

“If I were to cre­ate a genre for this book it would be a YA/Spooky Chick­lit. What a com­bi­na­tion! Yet every­thing flowed well and the char­ac­ters were excep­tion­ally fun to read. Kind of like a grown up R. L. Stine.…This is the per­fect quick read for a dark and stormy sum­mer night. It will keep your atten­tion and keep you right on the edge of your seat until the last page is turned!”
A Chick Who Reads

“I’m a huge ghost hunter, para­nor­mal inves­ti­gat­ing fan, mak­ing this book my cup of tea. This is a fun, char­ac­ter dri­ven story with enough spooky para­nor­mal ele­ments to keep you on the edge of your seat but not scare you to death! The author brings the char­ac­ters to life with her descrip­tive and splen­did writ­ing style, allow­ing the reader to con­nect with them almost instantly.”Romanc­ing the Darkside

Excerpts from For­ever Young Adult’s Rave Review:
On Perry:
“Perry totally needs a BFF to have her back, ’cause the girl’s life has felt like one big slap in the face. It’s not easy to grow up strug­gling with your self-image, and your propen­sity for curves when your mom is a for­mer model and your lit­tle sis­ter takes after her com­pletely. But Perry, I would be there for you. We could go thrift­ing for old band t-shirts and comfy boots, and you could bake pie, and I would totally eat it with you, and I would believe you when you told me about the weird things you see. Just don’t ask me to go to that light­house with you.“
On Perry + Dex:
“Perry and Dex. Oh, Dex and Perry. Dex, how I found you swoony with your 90′s eye­brow ring, I’ll never know. But some­how, those stormy eyes or yours won me over. But you guys, how you frus­trate me with your flir­ta­tion and grow­ing feel­ings for each other! This book keeps you on the edge of your seat ask­ing the ‘will they or won’t they’ ques­tion, while build­ing up sex­ual ten­sion like boil­ing water in a teapot. All I can say is: they bet­ter.“
On the author:
“Halle’s first-person nar­ra­tive is writ­ten in a breezy fash­ion that instantly made me feel like I could hang out with her pro­tag­o­nist. Perry has the voice of a true young woman –from her strengths to her idio­syn­cra­cies– includ­ing her sometimes-use of obscure adjec­tives and flow­ery descrip­tion. She also writes some seri­ously scary shit. Like, not ‘give you night­mares’ scary, but full-on haunt­ing sus­pense that left my pulse rac­ing on more than one occa­sion. “
Read the rest HERE I beg ya.

Here’s what Char­lie Court­land at Bitsy Bling Books had to say:
Five Stars for Dark­house — a Rainy Sum­mer­time Read

“Dark­house is seduc­tively enter­tain­ing and I’m con­vinced that it has some secret ingre­di­ent (like the sauce on a Big Mac or the cof­fee beans at Star­bucks) that makes it imme­di­ately addic­tive. Red Fox is com­ing out soon and I sim­ply can’t wait (okay, maybe I’m beg­ging a lit­tle) for the author to send me an advanced copy. What makes it so good? Perry is a reli­able char­ac­ter: flawed, inse­cure, impul­sive, but despite her own road­blocks she has a deter­mi­na­tion that the audi­ence can clearly see even if she does not (yet). It is her self-awareness that makes the char­ac­ter appeal­ing, trust­wor­thy and hon­est.

Dark­house is an exam­ple of a con­fi­dent and assured author’s ‘voice.’ The writer con­nects with the char­ac­ters, deeply under­stand­ing and chan­nel­ing them onto the page. By the end I was con­vinced Perry was writ­ing this story. I have no doubt that Perry and Dex are real–and they live through author Karina Halle.“

Read the rest of the review HERE at Bitsy Bling Books

The won­der­ful, col­or­ful Jaki over at The Dog-Eared Page (now sparkly vam­pire free) wrote a pretty spot-on review of Dark­house. Here are some excerpts I liked (though I did like all of the review):
“Nice to come across a hero­ine who can take care of her­self, but isn’t some leather-wearing rock chick with gor­geous “raven” hair and “vio­let” eyes who squeezes her­self into tiny sex queen out­fits. *grin* And I think that’s what I loved the most about Perry – she’s nor­mal.“
“While the super­nat­ural part of the book – the haunted light­house – is essen­tially what the tale is about, I found myself more drawn in by the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and voices. I loved Perry. She’s so lost in her life, no idea what she wants to do, just fum­bling around try­ing to keep going. She’s funny and smart – but she’s not TOO funny, she’s not a one-liner for every lit­tle (or big) thing going on around her.“
“Dex is a strange strange char­ac­ter. Dude, this guy is weird! I hon­estly couldn’t work him out – one minute I was expect­ing him to do some­thing totally evil or even mean to Perry, the next I was wait­ing for him to jump her bones…He’s a char­ac­ter I want to like, but I can’t work out if I do.“
Read the full review HERE.

And Can­dice over at the Baked in Van­cou­ver blog included pic­tures(!) in her cute review. Here are some excerpts:
“Right from the start the main char­ac­ter, Perry Palomino, sucks you in with her relat­able and sar­cas­tic per­son­al­ity.“
“Not only had Dark­house turned me into a sexy bitch, but it also left me crav­ing answers. I con­tem­plated pay­ing Karina to tell me what hap­pens at the end, but I know it will be far more inter­est­ing to explore and grow with these char­ac­ters in the books to come. This series will no doubt have more twists then I can even begin to antic­i­pate right now — and that is what a series should be. Addict­ing.“
Review from Style Sym­me­try
“I just fin­ished read­ing Dark­house by local Van­cou­ver author and first time nov­el­ist Karina Halle and I’m wide eyed with my heart rac­ing and itch­ing for more. The main char­ac­ter Perry Palomino is a real per­son, a hard rock chick who is unsure of her­self but will­ing to take any and all chances that life sends her way. It’s how you know that her life will con­tinue to be excit­ing and relat­able as we watch her grow as the series con­tin­ues.” - Read the rest of the review HERE

Review from Lemon­ade Mag­a­zine

“Dark­house tells the story of every day girl, Perry and quasi-web star Dex. The two sud­denly become Ghost Hunters of sorts after check­ing out Perry’s Uncle’s haunted light house.
I LOVED the fact that this book was so raw. Sure the fact that it is pub­lished indie gives it a few quirks, such as some typos here and there and such, but let’s be hon­est folks.…if the enter­tain­ment qual­ity is there, who the hell cares? Perry is such a love­able char­ac­ter and a great role model char­ac­ter for young female read­ers (who aren’t freaked out by scary books too easy) and her rela­tion­ship with Dex is genius! It’s both relat­able and funny, which makes it an enjoy­able side story to the page turn­ing para­nor­mal side of Dark­house.
The book can be pretty scary at times, mostly because of Halle’s way of mak­ing the dead both sad and jeal­ous of the liv­ing. She paints the scenes very well and even makes you develop a soft spot for some of the more annoy­ing char­ac­ters (deep down I think Ada is pretty awe­some). I really hope peo­ple catch on, because I can’t wait for more in this series!”

Review from Munchy’s Place
“As a first book I’d say this sets up the inter­ac­tion between the major char­ac­ters very well, at the end you are left want­ing more, to know what hap­pens not just in the work between them but also in their per­sonal life.”

REVIEWS FOR RED FOX
“Perry and Dex are two charis­matic and slightly crazy char­ac­ters that carry you in kick­ing and scream­ing along for the ride. So far it’s been an awe­some ride and I can’t wait to see where they go in the next.”Naughty Between the Stacks
“The story itself deals with a new adven­ture or should I say, night­mar­ish week­end. This time con­fronting Navajo mythol­ogy, includ­ing skin­walk­ers, and framed by a New Mex­ico set­ting. Red Fox is unique because although it has a sim­i­lar thread when com­pared to Dark­house (the para­nor­mal) it is not the same story, dif­fer­ent set­ting. I liked the vari­a­tion from haunt­ing ghosts to Navajo shapeshifters and the char­ac­ters reac­tions to the expe­ri­ence through their inex­pe­ri­ence” - Bitsy Bling Books


“Once again Halle cap­ti­vated me with her writ­ing and unfor­get­table char­ac­ters, I hope to read many more adven­tures with her ghost hunt­ing gang and that more creepy sto­ries are to come. I felt that Red Fox wasn’t as scary as Dark­house but I loved that it was a dif­fer­ent para­nor­mal ele­ment, hav­ing them go on a dif­fer­ent mys­te­ri­ous adven­ture every time is more excit­ing. Over­all I highly rec­om­mend the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series!”See­ing Night Reviews
“I’ve made it abun­dantly clear that I loved Book 1 in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror series, Dark­house. Because I felt so strongly about that book, I was a lit­tle ner­vous to get started on Book 2, Red Fox. Crises averted, because I loved Red Fox even more (if that’s possible)!…I don’t think, short of being com­pletely ridicu­lous, I can encour­age you more strongly to read this series. It has quickly moved to the top of my favorites list. This book left me dying. I want to read Book 3, Dead Sky Morn­ing, now.”Book­ish Babes
Once again, Can­dice over at Baked in Van­cou­ver offered her humor­ous two cents on Red Fox, Book Two in the Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror Series.

“As the story devel­ops, we meet some new char­ac­ters who truly illus­trate my favourite parts about both of the nov­els so far — the dia­logue. Karina has a way of writ­ing dia­logue that makes it feel like she recorded an actual con­ver­sa­tion and then, like a stenog­ra­pher, replays and writes it out word for word. It makes you feel like you are a fly on the wall, or in this case — a crow in Albur­querque.“
“From the first book, I had formed an opin­ion of Dex Foray that wasn’t the best. I found him arro­gant and a lit­tle psy­chotic and frankly, I thought Perry could do bet­ter (even if they aren’t dating…but I’m call­ing it now). As you make your way deeper into Red Fox, you’re intro­duced to a softer side of the usu­ally silent man. His vul­ner­a­bil­ity and new found emo­tions, made me want Perry to give him a rose at the next Bach­e­lorette rose cer­e­mony so that he sticks around for a bit. The rela­tion­ship between them heads in all dif­fer­ent direc­tions, and believe me when I say that you’ll want to keep up. At one point I wanted to deboard the plane, get chased by a bear and go sit in a tree. Read the book. You’ll want to do that too.“
You can read the rest of the review HERE :)
REVIEW FOR DEAD SKY MORNING