This was a lot of fun and left me wanting to read more about Haunted stories. The book is very easy to read and very bright and colourful. My only complaint really was that everything was illustrated and I would have liked to have seen photos of the places, people and ghosts experienced.

An insightful and illustrative look at ghosts and hauntings and their effect on history and its people. The illustrations were brilliantly colourful and entertaining in places and really helped the text.

The illustrations are beautiful, and I learn some interesting facts. It covers quite a basic level, so would be ideal for younger readers.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

I had to keep checking that this wasn't a children's book! The amount of subheadings in this are vast but the actual information that is about each legend, myth or notorious ghost story isn't very full (or maybe not as full as I expected) but it did prompt me to do my own Google search for the stories that I wanted to know more about. The illustrations in the book (obviously this was on a e-reader) seemed very good although simplistic but I didn't mind, but I think they reminded me of a children's non fiction book and therefore with its meager information gave me middle-grade feels.

The illustrations were beautiful but the formatting on Kindle made it a really hard slog, if this were fixed it would definitely improve my rating. The information was super interesting

Only goes into the topic on a basic level. Was expecting this to be more in depth. Perfect for younger readers however.

An interesting read with fabulous illustrations!
Well laid out and with chapters that make sense.
I really enjoyed this book, many thanks

This is a beautifully illustrated book and a fun intro to the world of ghost-hunting. After reading I wanted nothing more than to find a spooky old building and carry out a ghost hunt of my own! Adam Allsuch Boardman's writing is easy to read and informative and really gets you into a spooky mood. This is a great book for experienced ghost hunters and newbies alike.

i loved this! the illustrations were great and there was plenty of information. i appreciate that it wasn’t an entirely eurocentric history of ghosts/the paranormal. there were lots of different countries and cultures mentioned. one other thing i really loved was the further reading and further watching sections at the end, a cool little inclusion.

kind of reminded me of a grown up horrible histories style of book, the illustration style is fairly similar!

The Illustrated History of Ghosts

Unfortunately, not a great reading experience.
The formatting (on my Kindle) was very shonky - with bits of text out of sequence and illustration headings popping up out of context and difficult-to-read very pale text. I thought the illustrations were quite poor and considering the title of the book, I suppose I expected more from them.
Would make a good gift in book form though. It would be unfair to rate the book on it’s formatting, so I give the informational text three stars.

An Illustrated History of Ghosts is a fun introduction into ghosts and ghost-hunting that has appeared throughout history. It covers ghosts around the world from ancient times to amityville horror and beyond.

It's definitely based in fact and in the ghost hunting section points out other reasons for supposed hauntings.

It is a very brief history so each section doesn't go far into detail at all. But overall it's a fun book to dip into and learn a little about ghosts around the world.

A quickfire tour through the history of ghosts throughout history and different cultures, myths and legend, right through to modern 19th-21st century experiences and their use in pop culture. This would make a fun gift for that friend that loves to watch unsolved mysteries or ghost hunter TV shows, or to those who are interested in dipping their toe into this area.

The artwork is by far and away the biggest asset to this book, it straddled the line between infographic and illustrative style in just the right way, and every page was full of fun characters and objects to make this a really visually engaging read. It would have been even better if this could have been utilised for some stories to be more of a comic/graphic novel format.

It didn't go into as much detail as I'd hoped - I thought we'd get a few more in depth case studies/stories told in a more compelling way, but it was very much "here's the fact, move on" with some puns thrown in.

Occasionally I felt it made light of or was critical of certain cultures and beliefs, while also pushing a particular opinion/agenda, which made me question some of the 'facts' I was being presented. There were some instances of 'this may have been' and 'some historians believe' without clarity on who, and how credible, these opinions are. There is a further reading list at the end, but individual facts aren't specifically cited within the text so it's difficult to know the book's sources for individual pieces of information.

Overall, this was a fun read, but not particularly striking - there isn't anything especially groundbreaking that I learnt from it, so I may end up forgetting aspects of it pretty quickly, besides it's excellent illustration and design!

As we move into Halloween weekend, what better time to talk about “An Illustrated History of Ghosts”.

The author, Adam Allsuch Boardman is an illustrator and fan of trivia who has previously written “An Illustrated History of UFO’s”, and “An Illustrated History of Filmmaking”, both of which I’d be interested in having a look at.

The style of this book is very much a mix of historical and factual information on the paranormal (and those who took advantage of people’s gullibility around it), and all the fun pop culture stuff!

I’ve shared a couple of pages in the slides to illustrate that; I found a lot of the historical parts about how different cultures approach the concept of ghosts really interesting, but as a noted pop culture fiend, I particularly enjoyed all the mentions of ghost related books and films a lot too!

The illustrations in this book are what really sells it though, they are so eye catching and perfect for the subject matter. I’ll definitely have a look at this author/illustrators other work. I think these would make great stocking fillers/secret Santa gifts for people with slightly quirkier taste!

With thanks to @netgalley and @nobrowpress for the opportunity to read this book, which is available to buy now!

"An Illustrated History of Ghosts" by Adam Boardman is, as the title suggests, the history of everything ghost related with illustrations.

I would give "An Illustrated History of Ghosts" by Adam Boardman a 3-star review because, 1; as someone who believes in ghosts, I found this highly informative 2; I really liked how they discussed everything that was relevant to ghosts but 3; honestly, I felt this book was more for children and it wasn't really a horror novel like it suggested when you look at it.

Fun and informative. It’s nicely illustrated and had just the right information to keep you interested. Overall a good book for a gift even if people don’t believe in ghosts

DNF @ 57%

I don’t normally write ‘full’ reviews for books I DNF, but I got to 57% of this very short book and had to give up. This was largely due to the formatting errors, of which there were many, but also partly because the book itself was just extremely basic.

This might be a fun idea for kids, to serve as a kind of ‘Introduction to Ghosts’, but beyond that it’s a really unnecessary edition to books about ghosts. The illustrations are cute, but sometimes felt a bit off? Then again half of them didn’t have the correct caption, and the other half the captions felt weirdly like presenting something they weren’t. This book might have been more effective if it had included actual photos rather than the illustrations the book is named for. Again, the illustrations are cute, but maybe with a mix of photos and illustrations and naming it ‘Introduction to the History of Ghosts’ would have helped it feel like it had more of a focus?

The details are all over the place. I know some arc formatting errors are to be expected, but this had sentences chopped up and scattered all over the page, to the point the last page I tried to read was impossible to actually read.

It’s separated into sections, but a lot of these were so short with very little information, with maybe a couple of sentences per entry. It felt like a very jumpy book, and in most cases missed off details that would have been very useful when talking about specific places, incidents, or people (such as location). The majority of information is stuff you’ll already know if you have even the slightest interest in the paranormal, which it really feels like this author doesn’t.

I like a dose of healthy scepticism with my paranormal reading, but certain parts of this felt full of disdain at the very idea of ghosts. It felt like someone had read the Wikipedia page for ‘History of Ghosts’ and added illustrations.

Any enjoyment I think I would have got out of this book was, unfortunately, ruined by the terrible formatting. Again, some formatting errors with arcs is fine, as they are arcs, but this was horrendous. There are other books in this series, but based on this one, I won’t be picking up any.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

An Illustrated History of Ghosts is a cute little book which was a surface and light read about the history of ghosts. I did expect it to go more in depth than it did but I still enjoyed it. This reads more as an introductory guide and would be suitable for younger readers although it is classed as adult fiction. I'd say age 13+ would enjoy this book. The illustrations were simple but fun but again could have been better in some places as more detail was needed in some areas of the book visually. Overall this is a fun read and is definitely a perfect read for spooky season!

This book was so lovely and the illustrations were amazing. It was well written and full of information, some stuff I knew and some stuff I didn’t.
I love how the illustrations were spread throughout and worked really well. Would be a great read for older kids who are interested in learning about ghosts.
The only downside I have, is that as it was an arc and a pdf file the layout was sometimes clunky and there were several times the sentences didn’t sit where they were supposed to which made for awkward reading but assuming this wouldn’t be an issue when I’m print, just an fyi for anyone reading a pdf copy.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy to read and review.

This wasn't quite what I was expecting. I struggled through the start because the formatting was all over the place on my kindle app, until a friend suggested using the NetGalley Shelf App which totally changed it! It's weird that it doesn't work properly on the kindle app as I can read graphic novels on there no problem but this just didn't work at all.

Once that was sorted though I did enjoy the book but it didn't really give me anything new. It reads a lot younger than I was expecting (especially as it is classed as Nonfiction (Adult) on Netgalley...) and the illustrations don't really get across the impact of some of the things we're reading about (such as ghost photos etc).

It never really dived into any of the stories/techniques/technology it was telling us about, so we only get a surface level of everything. I understand it's a short book, but some of the things mentioned are glossed over to the point it really wasn't worth including them.

As someone with an interest in this subject, I could follow it fine but I don't know how a new to subject reader would fare. It could be a good introduction but for a younger audience.

Overall, it was fine but didn't really give me what I was after.

This is a fantastic-looking book that I have found I keep going back to. It is not an academic book but one that is fun to read and packed with brilliant illustrations.