Book Review | Ghosted

Rating ⭐⭐

This is definitely not the typical 'thriller' type fiction I have been reading lately, because it is not a thriller at all. But there was still a mystery and I just had to know what happened.

Sarah and Eddie had what are repeatedly described as six wonderful/perfect/amazing days together, and the Eddie disappears. Sarah has been ghosted and she goes to great lengths to find out why. She believes something has happened to Eddie, that what they had in that short time was real, and he would never simply ghost her and never contact her again. At the end of this time together, Eddie is off on a vacation that he had booked before they met. He tells Sarah he will call from the airport, but never does. He ignores all attempts that Sarah makes to reach him and drives her to the brink of insanity. Okay, to be fair the 'insanity' part is my interpretation, because was pretty crazy-obsessed. She continued insisting to her friends that what they had was real, that it was not just her feeling this way, etc. Her friends continue to tell Sarah to forget about him and move on, but she can't. Sarah believes there is an explanation, and that she deserves to know said explanation. She won't stop until she gets it. Despite sharing so much of their histories one another in those six days, there is one event neither discuss and that is the very thing that links them together beyond this chance meeting, in quite an awful way.

So this one took me forever to even figure out how to rate. I honestly kept going only because I wanted to know why Eddie ghosted her. It is important to note that these are two adults in their late 30s. Both behaved in the most immature of ways. If we could have seen more of the 'relationship' develop in those few days, maybe I would feel differently about Sarah's behavior once Eddie had ghosted. Maybe the author wanted us to just trust her that they had fallen in love so quickly and so intensely, and by trusting that we could then just believe it to be totally realistic in the way they both acted afterward. We get little snippets of their time together, but that's it. Sarah comes across as a super whiny stage-five clinger and Eddie is the douche that never called. If they had been twenty years younger, I probably would not have found the behavior by either of them as ridiculous. However, being in that age range myself of late-30s, I was absolutely put off by Sarah's obsession with getting the truth from Eddie. There was no way for the reader to understand their connection, because we did not see it develop. I honestly did not care one way or another if they actually ended up together, I just wanted to see how it all played out.

Given the thrillers I have read lately, and those I have loved in the past, I found myself hoping that Sarah would turn out to be one of my most favorite kinds of characters - the unreliable narrator. At least then we would have some kind of reason for her level of obsession with a guy she only knew for six days. Sadly, this was not the case. She is simply a 19 year old trapped in a 39 year old body. Too bad.

In the end the story comes together, but man it was a slog to get there. I would not consider this romance at all, because there is no romance to be seen. It is a bit of a mystery, but not the thriller-y kind at all. I don't really know how to classify it, to be honest.

One thing the author did well was showing how the different characters connected to the BIG SECRET responded in their grief. Grief looks so different on everyone, and that is at least one positive I can give for this book.

While it is not a book I am going to jump up on a soapbox and recommend to everyone, I am sure there is an audience for it. I am just not part of that audience.