Rating: WARTY!
This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
I thought this might make for an interesting read, but I could not get into it at all. The haunting husband came off to me as a very selfish person, stalking his wife for his own needs and not expending an ounce of thought for her, and the writing style felt juvenile to me, like the kind of thing I would have written in my teens. It did not appeal to me at all.
The story is of Jordan, who is in a deadly car accident with his wife Emily, who was pregnant. Jordan is a doctor. Emily was planning on being a nurse. Jordan discovers he is still 'alive' after the accident and he doesn't present as being too smart at this point because it takes him forever to discover he's a ghost. From that point on, the story goes downhill. Everyone and their uncle can apparently see ghosts in this world, yet it takes an age before Jordan himself actually sees another ghost. When Luke comes along, he's unbearable. At least he was for me.
Luke is a skateboarder and his language simply nauseated me. Here's how Luke addresses Jordan when the two have barely met: "Jords, my man, the world is our oyster." No! Just no. That was when I quit reading this because I simply could not bear the thought of reading another word of Luke's dialog at all. Luke reminded me of that idiot guy Harry Ellis in the movie Die Hard who snorts coke and tries to negotiate with the terrorists - and is summarily shot by Hans Gruber. I was simultaneously wondering if this is how Luke met his end and begging for Gruber's ghost to show up and shoot Luke. He was obnoxious.
I'd been turned off the story prior to that though. Authors routinely dis nurses in stories where hospitals are featured as part of the story because it's all about the doctor, isn't it? As it happens, this appears to be the very theme of this story: Jordan's needs. So this novel went down that sewer when I read this grotesque insult: "I wanted to convince Allie to shoot bigger and become a doctor." Yes! The take-home message here is that nurses are substandard and contribute nothing compared with the doctor gods! Barf.
So I am sorry. I started out hoping for the best, but was more and more turned off by the story the further I read, and in the end I DNF'd it. I can't commend it as a worthy read based on my experience.
