Ghosts

 

Nina George Dean is a 32-year-old single food writer living in London and slowly watching her pool of friends marry off and grow their families. Having a more feminist mindset, she doesn’t need a man to complete her, but nonetheless, has the same desire as many for her own family and person to love, if life chooses to bring it her way.  Enter the Linx dating app and her match made in heaven, Max.

Max is handsome, kind, supportive, stable … everything Nina could hope for.  Their sexual chemistry is off the charts and they spend every moment they can together for three months, even reaching the epic moment when Max says “I love you” and she returns the sentiment.

Then …  it’s over. He stops responding to her texts and calls. The weeks drag by. She’s been ghosted by the man of her dreams. The “will they, won’t they” end up together question? I’ll leave that to the reader.

This book has been marketed as a romantic comedy, but as much as I liked it, and I really did for the most part, it feels like a mislabel.  It does have plenty of humor and charm, and Alderton’s writing is fantastic, but there’s an awful lot of sadness and tension in this for me to go along with that categorization.  Nina’s beloved father, Bill, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, has a fair chunk of the story highlighting the disintegration of his thinking and personality, as well as Nina’s mother, Nancy’s, dysfunctional response to it.  Alderton did an amazing job of portraying it - and the stress it puts on the family - in a realistic light, but it was way too serious for a book marketed as comedy.  It felt like two competing stories happening … the one with Nina and Max and the one with Nina and her father.

There are other issues happening in the book as well:  the distancing relationship she has with her childhood best friend, Katherine, navigating friendship with her recently engaged ex-boyfriend, Joe, and her toxic relationship with her downstairs neighbor, Angelo. Regarding Angelo, his inclusion in the book and an event involving him at the end, is my one big black mark against it, and I really can’t make sense of why the author went there, despite the book’s explanation.

Plot and believability issues aside, I loved the writing and was completely engaged in the story, and I would absolutely read another book by this author.  I just hope the next time around is a little lighter!

★★★ ½  (rounded to 4 for the excellent writing)

Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing, Netgalley and author Dolly Alderton for this ARC in exchanged for my honest opinion.  This will be published August 3, 2021.