What Digs Itself Free

By: Stoney Brooks

Narrated by: Sean Walpole

Zap Rogers has made a career out of exploiting others, most of whom are dead. With one of the most successful, longest running ghost hunting shows on the market, he and his team have raked in the cash. But with market trends shifting, Zap and his crew are no longer relevant, and are losing market share to younger, more hip trends.

Scrambling to remain in the spotlight, Zap and his crew order new gear in an attempt to give the show a facelift. But when a mysterious package arrives from a secret admirer, things begin to take a sour turn. Investigations are seemingly sabotaged, weird sightings around the house have everyone on edge, Zap’s plagued with nightmares of a mysterious old hag, and the manifestations are not only haunting, but starting to get physical.

With the help of an old colleague Zap begins investigating the occurrences, following the trail right back to his own selfish behavior. Now Zap must do everything in his power to stop the malevolent entity before this investigation turns into his last.

©2026 Stoney Brooks (P)2026 Stoney Brooks

Fun listen but lacks cohesion, MC extremely unlikable

The prologue was pretty interesting and seemed to take place during the Holocaust. After that I was very confused as to why that was the prologue. There is a very vague connection to that and I feel like I wish that was followed up on more.

Minor spoilers ahead...

The main character is Zap and he is extremely unlikable. He is pretty much a d-bag, a narcissist with misogynist undertones and a hug womanizer. He does not care about any of the women and treats them like objects. I felt completely blindsided by this because I don't see any of this in the blurb about the book. It says it's about a ghost hunting team and they have to become more relevant. Nothing in there says that for a good 80% of this book, the main character is extremely unlikable teetering onto hatred. For me this was not a I love to hate him sort of situation, I just really did not like him. This made me not care what happened to him at all which made me almost not even want to listen to this. I listened to the audio and I did like the narrator. He did an excellent job with the voices and with making Zap sound extremely unlikable.

I did really like Rosie but then her entire character changed and she was not the same character anymore and became unlikable. It seems like she betrayed who she actually was. I felt a lot of things were thrown into this book for no reason and things were not properly explored. I felt more could have been explored with the character relationships. It felt very superficial at times.

I also didn't really like the climactic part of the book with the villain you can say. It felt a bit weak storyline wise and then also disturbing. I don't really see how a lot of it ties in and there's a lot of loose ends that are left. I kept hoping that things would be more resolved with everyone and they weren't.

The very unlikable main character does have a redeeming arc at the end but I did not care. The author did too good of a job at making him unlikable that I didn't want to see him redeemed or anything like that. I simply did not care what happened to him. It was not badly written but I do feel that a lot of it could be deeper and more cohesive. It was a fun listen but I didn't find it scary.

Starts out strong

3.5 stars rounded up

I was gifted this copy of the audio book

First off, I didn’t mind the narrator he had good voice inflection however I did speed up the audio just a bit to 1.2 and it was perfect. This book stars our main protagonist Zap, who is a not the most likeable character that does have a bit of a redemption arc in the end (although a bit of a confusing one to be honest. ) who has a failing paranormal tv show who ends up haunted by his past. This book starts out great in the first half and then kinda looses the plot midway through where I’m left with a lot of questions. Quick easy book to read and the audio is enjoyable.