Review Detail

I love ghosts. I love ghost stories. I love stories about people who can see and interact with ghosts. Unfortunately, this is not a "waking up in the middle of the night because the ghosts are going to get me" story. This is just your typical paranormal teen romance.

Ghost House starts with the untimely death of Chloe and Rory's mother. After having not seen ghosts for years, Chloe begins seeing them again after her mom's death, whose funeral we begin the story on. Not long after said funeral, Chloe's grandmother decides she and her 12-year-old brother should go back to Hampshire with her for a change of scenery.

Almost immediately, Chloe encounters the ghost of Alexander Reade and he is the most beautiful thing she has every laid eyes on. If you've read my reviews before, you know how I feel about instalove. Nine times out of ten, it's a deal breaker for me. I didn't immediately close the book because it doesn't start out as instalove, but as a crush. Something innocent that everybody goes through. However, just a few short days and minimal encounters later . . . L-O-V-E to the max. A delayed instalove if you will. At one point she even states that she'd "been waiting all my life for Alexander Reade to show up." Slow your roll, kid.

Now Joe was a love interest I could get behind - and he had a lot going for him: 1) British 2) Nice guy 3) Good with animals, especially horses 4) Great with Rory 5) Has flesh and a pulse. But no, she goes for the dead guy whose crazy, also very dead, girlfriend is out to get Chloe for unknown reasons.

I found myself to just be . . . underwhelmed. Plot, dialogue, descriptions, characters. All relatively underwhelming. There were interesting aspects (the flashbacks into the history of Alexander and Isobel, for instance), I was intrigued as to what Isobel's deal was, and on occasion Chloe's narrative pulled me into the story. Unfortunately, the bad outweighed the good and I was unable to get fully enriched in the story.

However, I can see younger readers enjoying this book. I envision giving it to my 16-year-old cousin and her thoroughly enjoying the book and hankering to get her hands on the next two. Also, I think I would have enjoyed this back when I was a Twilight fan (and if you are a Twilight fan I don't mean anything bad by this, I'm merely making a comparison). For me, the book just felt been there, done that, don't wanna go back. I am just not the right audience for this book and there's nothing wrong with that.