Sunday, August 8, 2021

Book Review: "Ghosts" by Dolly Alderton

Dolly Alderton's debut novel is a funny, poignant story about relationships, family, and finding your way.

Nina is 32. She’s a successful food writer whose second book is about to be published. She’s fine being single, but as all of her friends increasingly are getting married and having children, she starts to wonder if she should care more about it.

She downloads a dating app, and after conversations with men that go nowhere (and take days to unfold), she meets Max. He’s handsome, smart, stable, and they find themselves falling for each other. And then, without warning, he ghosts her.

Without Max to spend time with, Nina suddenly has to confront the other problems in her life—she’s being constantly treated poorly by people because she’s not married with children, she’s feuding with her neighbor, her best friend has become utterly unreasonable, and her father’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse, and her mother doesn’t seem to be handling it well.

As she tries to make sense of her life and finding peace among the chaos, she starts to wonder about what her life holds. Ghosts is a sometimes funny, sometimes emotional, and quite relatable story about the messiness of life and how not to lose your way in the middle of it all.

I really enjoyed this book, which I’ve been meaning to read for a while and then my friend Lindsay jostled my memory! Nina is far from perfect but she’s a terrific character to root for and wonder along with her about the crazy people who surround her, and what her future might look like.

Knopf provided me a complimentary advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!!

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