"Sometimes I wonder... Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?"
That line hit me around hour three, and I had to pause. Set down my coffee. Stare at Shirley (the cat, not Jackson, though obviously named after Jackson) who was doing that thing cats do where they stare at empty corners like they're seeing something you can't. Great timing, honestly.
Here's the thing about Jodi Picoult writing horror-adjacent fiction: she doesn't really write horror. She writes tragedy with supernatural dressing. And *Second Glance* is maybe her most committed attempt at the genuinely eerie—a ghost story that's actually about eugenics, grief, and whether love can transcend death. It's ambitious as hell. It's also seventeen hours long and requires your full, undivided attention.
The Ghosts Picoult Actually Wants You to Fear
The supernatural elements here—the poltergeist activity, the spectral sightings, Ross Wakeman's death wish that death keeps refusing—those are the hook. But Picoult's real horror is historical. Vermont's eugenics project of the 1920s and 30s. The forced sterilizations. The targeting of Abenaki people. This is the stuff that made me stop listening on my lunch break at the library and switch to late-night sessions at home, because some research is too dark for fluorescent lighting and patrons asking about holds.
Picoult does what she does best: she takes something you probably didn't learn about in school and makes you feel complicit in the forgetting. The Abenaki burial ground isn't just a plot device. The ghosts aren't just atmosphere. Everything connects—past violence bleeding into present, the way it always does when we pretend history is over.
Compared to her other work, this sits somewhere between *My Sister's Keeper*'s emotional devastation and the structural complexity of *Leaving Time*. Less courtroom drama, more slow-building dread. If you've only experienced Picoult through her more conventional novels, this one might surprise you.
George Guidall Commits (Eventually)
Look, I'll be honest—the first three hours are rough. Not because Guidall is bad (the man has three Audies for a reason), but because Picoult throws a lot at you upfront. Multiple timelines. A sprawling cast. Ross's suicidal ideation, which Guidall delivers with this hollow, exhausted quality that's effective but not exactly inviting. Some listeners apparently bailed before chapter three, and I get it.
But if you push through? Guidall finds his rhythm. His voice for Lia Beaumont has this quality—hesitant, slightly distant—that makes perfect sense once you understand what she is. His rendering of the 1930s sections carries weight, a kind of formal cadence that signals "different era" without becoming parody. He's not doing distinct voices for every character (and honestly, with this many perspectives, multiple narrators might have helped), but he captures the atmosphere. The eeriness. That persistent sense that something is very, very wrong.
I listened to most of this in the dark. Mistake? Maybe. Worth it? Absolutely. There's a scene involving a flooded basement and something that shouldn't be there—Guidall's pacing there is perfect. Slow. Deliberate. Letting the dread build.
Who Should Brave Seventeen Hours of Vermont Gothic
This understands that horror isn't about gore—it's about dread. About the things we've done that we can't undo. If you want jump scares and monsters, skip this. If you want a ghost story that's actually about American complicity in atrocity, wrapped in a genuinely affecting love story about two people who shouldn't be able to touch—this is your book.
But fair warning: content includes violence, abuse, period-accurate bigotry, and some sexual content. The eugenics material is handled seriously, which means it's disturbing. As it should be.
Not for background listening. Not for workouts. This requires focus—preferably late at night, preferably alone, preferably when you're ready to feel uncomfortable about things that actually happened.
The Kind of Haunting That Stays
My podcast listeners are going to love this—it's exactly the kind of literary horror that gets overlooked because it doesn't fit neatly into genre boxes. Picoult isn't trying to scare you the way King does (and yes, I maintain Hill House is scarier than anything King wrote, fight me). That same kind of atmospheric dread—the kind that builds slowly and refuses to let go—is what makes Shadow of Night work so well as historical fiction with teeth. She's trying to make you remember. To make you look at the ghosts we've created through policy and prejudice and ask whether they can ever really rest.
Ross Wakeman keeps trying to die. The ghosts of Comtosook keep trying to be seen. And Picoult keeps asking: what do we owe the dead? What do we owe each other?
Seventeen hours is a commitment. But some hauntings are worth the time.
