Publication Date: 20th August 2024
Genre: Family Drama, Queer Romance
3 Stars
One Liner: An under-baked cake smothered in icing
Ezra Friedman’s family owned the Friedman Family Memorial Chapel, which made it hard for him as he saw ghosts. The ghosts (dead ones and personal) made him leave his home to make a new life. Being a trans male with unprocessed trauma was hard enough.
However, Ezra meets a ghost who defies all the rules he has understood about them. It doesn’t help that the ghost is Ben, the dead husband of Jonathan, a part-time volunteer at the Chapel and Ezra’s new neighbor. Ezra needs to face his trauma instead of avoiding it if he wants a chance with Jonathan. Can he do it?
The story comes in Ezra’s third-person POV.
My Thoughts:
So… I fell in love with that wonderful cover. The mention of a funeral home and its ghosts was enough for me to request the book. I went into it hoping for an entertaining paranormal romance. Unfortunately, I got a slow-paced family drama with meandering narration.
This is a debut book (from what I see on Goodreads) and reads like one. There’s no denying that it deals with some important themes. But it should have been marketed as an intense read, not lighthearted. (You see me use the word trauma twice in my summary. I’d have appreciated it if the official blurb said it at least once)
The rep is terrific. There are several queer characters in the book. Some of them have been wasted, though. It would have been better with just one or two of them present and well-fleshed out than a blurry of names.
I love the found family trope and hoped it would be prominent when we were introduced to a bunch of housemates at once. While they do play a small part, I felt the potential has been wasted in too much monologue and heavy exposition. It gets lost in the drama of the existing family.
This is a book about a sort of dysfunctional family. However, the members clearly love each other. Communication is a big issue, but otherwise, it’s not horrible. The focus is so much on family drama and the MC’s response (or the lack of it) that it doesn’t leave space for anything else.
Jonathan is a lovely guy, human and flawed obviously, but also someone with a beautiful heart. Ben, despite being a ghost, shines better than some other characters.
The Jewish rep and the details of the rituals were great to read. I learned a lot about their funeral practices, so that’s well done.
I really wish the ghostly aspects were more prominent in the story. I wanted to see the MC explore his talents. Without ghosts, the story wouldn’t be much different. Also, it was too easy with Ben being a talking ghost and all.
The narration is super slow. I zoned out whenever the MC spaced out. Yeah, not assuring! Readers who enjoy such kind of meandering narration will like this book more. IMO, I’d have loved it if it was 30-50 pages shorter. The first half could have benefitted from toning with surgical precision.
The author calls this a family drama with ghosts, queer rep, romance, and humor in the interview at the end. The book was intended to be a family drama. It should have stuck to that aspect (along with the queer rep, of course). There really isn’t much of the dark humor I was expecting. The whole book is heavy and exhausting, unlike the cover, which is vibrant and cheerful. Anyway, thank you for not finalizing the version with the ‘twist’.
To summarize, Rules for Ghosting is the story of a family that finally learns to communicate properly and an MC who realizes his self-worth after a lot of monologues. I think the book needed a ruthless editor for the main plot to stand out and shine. Right now, it is, unfortunately, a kitchen sink.
Thank you, NetGalley and Ramdon House Books (Ballantine | Dell), for eARC.
#NetGalley #RulesForGhosting
No comments:
Post a Comment