The Short Version
- Narrator: Reba Buhr has no confirmed prior credit; the job here is selling Cass's matter-of-fact tone about her own haunting.
- Subjects: crossing between the living and the dead, found family, haunted-places adventure
- Tone: Spooky but warm, more chill than nightmare
- Bottom line: This works well as a middle grade ghost story, though adult Schwab fans should expect a different, younger register.
Cass almost drowned. Then, as the synopsis puts it plainly, she actually did, and came back changed: now she can pull back something called the Veil and step into the world on the other side of it. City of Ghosts opens with that premise already fully in place rather than easing into it, and by the time her family relocates to Edinburgh for her parents' new television show about the world's most haunted places, the stakes are already set. Her best friend, a ghost named Jacob according to two separate reviews, is already part of her life by the time the family reaches Scotland, which softens what might otherwise read as a pure horror setup. Reviewer Jess adds a detail the synopsis only implies: Cass's parents are not just television hosts chasing haunted locations, they are writers of paranormal books themselves, which makes the whole family's relationship with the supernatural a running theme rather than a single girl's secret.
One reviewer, writing in French, calls the book "Parfait" and praises "V.E. Schwab" by name, a reminder that the same author appears on shelves under two different bylines depending on the audience and the genre. Five reviews sit on this audiobook's listing, coming from three different countries, the United States, France, and Brazil among them, which is unusual enough on its own before getting into what any of them actually say about the story.
How City of Ghosts Holds Up
Reviewer Meaghan, writing under the heading "Cozy Spooky Ghosts in Scotland" for the blog Hail and Well Read, is refreshingly upfront about where that assessment is coming from: the review admits going in knowing City of Ghosts "wasn't going to be my all time favorite Schwab book" because it is a middle grade novel outside the reviewer's own target audience, with a star docked for feeling like something was missing rather than for any specific flaw. That honesty is useful context, because Kaley Connell's review, cross-posted from its original site, sketches exactly the reader this story was built to reach: a "strong willed female character" who is also a "self-proclaimed Gryffindor," fast paced, funny, a little scary, and sweet all at once.
The most unusual data point on this listing has nothing to do with plot. A review from Brazil, written in Portuguese, compares the pages to newsprint and comments that books shipped from abroad often arrive that way, language that reads like a note about a printed paperback's paper stock rather than anything about an audio recording. Nothing else in the listing explains why that comment is attached here, so it is worth flagging plainly rather than pretending the review is about narration quality. If you land on this product page while comparing formats, do not let a stray comment about paper stock talk you out of the audio edition; it is evidence of a mixed listing, not a defect in the recording.
Reba Buhr's name returns no earlier narration credit anywhere in the catalog, leaving nothing outside this listing to judge the performance against. The real test for a book like this is tone control: Cass narrates her own drowning and her own haunting in a matter-of-fact register the synopsis itself leans into, half wink and half genuine unease, and an audiobook only works if that balance survives being read aloud rather than skimmed on the page.
Why City of Ghosts Works as an Audiobook
Edinburgh does real work as a setting here. Once Cass's parents start filming their show, the family lands in a city of graveyards, castles, and secret passageways that reviewer Jess compares directly to another favorite, The Graveyard Book, as a point of reference for the tone. That comparison sets expectations well: this is horror softened by warmth rather than horror played straight, built for listeners who want a genuine chill without nightmares afterward.
Kaley Connell's review makes a case for the book reaching past its stated age range, describing a real connection to Cassidy despite being "a much older reader than what this book is 'technically' intended for." Combined with Cass meeting another girl who shares her exact "gift" partway through, per the synopsis, the book builds a found-family thread around the ghost-seeing premise that gives it more emotional weight than a straightforward haunted-house adventure would carry on its own. That second girl matters structurally too: for most of the book Cass has had exactly one confidant who understands what she can do, and a ghost cannot exactly compare notes with her about what it feels like to still be alive and afraid.
Weak Spots in City of Ghosts
Meaghan's review includes a direct content note worth repeating before you hand this to a child: death is present, including the death of a child and an animal, though that review specifies it is "not in graphic detail" and adds, reasonably, that "it's ghosts, comes with the territory." That is a fair description of what a haunted-places premise requires, but it is worth knowing going in rather than discovering it mid-chapter, especially for a listener who scares easily or is picking this for a much younger sibling.
A plain word of caution applies to the star rating too. The badge shows 4.5 from three counted votes, a number that cannot be produced by three whole-star ratings under any standard rounding convention, no matter how many written reviews, five of them here, actually sit on the page. Treat the badge as directional rather than exact, and read the reviews themselves for the fuller picture. Between the rating mismatch and the stray print-format comment, this is a listing where the surrounding data needs a little more scrutiny than the book itself does.
The Right Listener for City of Ghosts
Middle grade listeners who want spooky without nightmare fuel are the obvious audience, and Scholastic's five-hour runtime keeps the whole thing to a manageable length for a family listen or a single school-break binge. Older readers should not rule it out either: both Meaghan and Kaley Connell are adults who found real value here, even while naming the book's intended audience honestly. Listeners hoping for Schwab's darker adult fantasy work, the register behind a bestselling career under either byline, should look elsewhere in that catalog; this one is built for a younger shelf on purpose. Families weighing this against a longer audiobook for a road trip should note the short runtime finishes well inside a single drive, worth knowing before committing to something longer instead.
Questions Listeners Ask
Is the City of Ghosts audiobook too scary for younger listeners?
One review mentions loss touching both a child and an animal in the story, while stressing the treatment stays gentle rather than gruesome given the subject matter. Families comfortable with typical ghost-story stakes should be fine, but that note is worth knowing before handing this to a sensitive listener.
Does the City of Ghosts audiobook work for listeners who are not the target middle grade age?
Two reviewers here are visibly older than the intended readership and still connected with it. One review names itself as outside the target audience but still enjoyed the story, and another describes a real connection to the heroine despite being, in that reviewer's words, a much older reader than the book is technically intended for.
