I lasted two chapters. I tried to continue but failed. This book was just not for me. I am sorry....

“You’re insufficiently dead,” he said.

“I’m what?”

“Insufficiently dead. You lack rupture with your life. You have no exit narrative.”

This is a playful story about being dead and being alive. It’s just a state, really. Thomas Barrett has been trapped in nothingness due to some… mistake. He is insufficiently dead according to his visit to ‘the office’ and for the time being will exist in a state most will never have the chance to experience. Returned to earth with the living for a window of three months, he has rules that if he doesn’t follow will incur ‘regrets’. He’s best to forget the heaviness of his other life, and just enjoy his time in the new one, as much as a person who doesn’t actually exist can. He must learn to let go of the past, the old life, that is for all intents and purposes extinguished.

Thomas first notices the girl at a coffee shop, captivated by her. He decides a ‘harmless crush from afar’ won’t incur regrets, nor harm anyone. Something about the girl with her dark hair, glasses, how she “doled out her attention” pulls him in. Unbeknownst to him, she doesn’t fully exist either, but her error is loneliness and not death. The reader is introduced to Rachel who first notices Thomas at the bus stop, who seems to have some strange energy about him and, she notices, wears the same outfit every single day. Free of romantic entanglements for a year, she works as a reference librarian enjoying the fantasy of love and how it should be more than it’s actual crushing reality. A daydreamer, who has ‘fallen in love with her own dreams’, the object of her fantasy is now the electric man at the bus stop. Catching sight of him fuels her desire that seems to ‘encompass the world’. Will it last? Or will her bubble burst? Despite her best efforts to ignore her wild attraction, a meeting takes place and so begins one strange romance between a man and woman who compliment one another in an impossible love story.

There is so much about himself he must keep hidden and not for the usual reasons men remain mum. He truly is not at liberty to tell her, but when his body begins to betray him revelations are impossible to avoid. Being with Rachel feeds the wish for Thomas to be more present, but it is a race against time. Rachel herself seems to be disappearing more in Thomas who is much like a daydream and nightmares haunt her sleep… love as mystery. But what will become of Rachel, is it possible she too could be on some strange edge of existence?

I enjoyed this novel, it’s a romance but the life vs death theme, the exploration of individual separateness and all that entails, made it a bit more meaty. Thomas may be insufficiently dead, but is Rachel insufficiently alive? Are many of us? Delightful.

Publication Date: February 4, 2020

Little, Brown and Company

I loved the concept of the story and it had me hooked from the start. Unfortunately it fell a little flat for me in the end. The end felt a bit rushed and left a lot of unanswered questions. Nevertheless it was well written and I enjoyed the majority of it.

This was definitely one of the oddest books I've read this year. I've read my fair share of ghost stories, but this one carried itself differently and I was left with my own unanswered questions. Overall, this is a read I won't soon forget about.

I requested this after hearing about it from a librarian on twitter, but unfortunately, it is not the book for me. I didn't get past the first chapter.

This book seemed to skip around into different genres--it started out with a man who was supposed to die but something got messed up so he had to stick around or a while--so kind of a cool, supernatural element that intrigued me. But then the book turned into a romance with lots of descriptive sex scenes which is not my thing so I was ready to give the book up, but then the ending was actually thoughtful and kind of deep. I like the idea of a book not sticking to a formula but the bulk of the book was too romance novel-y for me.

The Regrets
A novel by Amy Bonnaffons

Amy Bonnaffons' debut novel, The Regrets, is a many-splendorous thing wrapped around a thoroughly fascinating package – a love story(s), ghost story, a story of discovering yourself, a mystery, a sexy romance, a fantasy, a haunting, a story of unrequited love, of lives filled with regrets and might-have-beens, of aching loneliness and the urgency of connecting, of belonging. .
It is also compelling, dark, playful, wickedly funny, sad and very readable. I read an advance copy of The Regrets cutesy of the author, NetGalley and publisher Little, Brown, and Company in exchange for an objective review. Objectively, I love everything about this strangle lovely book about Thomas – a man who is mistakenly dead because of a bureaucratic error, and now must remain on earth as a pseudo-ghost for 90 days as the issue is corrected. Its is also the story of Rachel - a librarian aching for true love beyond a flurry of meaningless sexual encounters who falls hopelessly in love with Thomas. Complications ensue (no spoilers from me) when another man enters the picture. Sadly all's not well and doesn't end well by the end of the book (or, maybe it does depending on your point of view)).

The Regrets is beautifully written, lyrical and honest. While the novel exists in the world of the fantastic, the nature of The Regrets (as Booklist points out) is grounded in the sharp truths of real-life love and desire. The book is not perfect. The librarian is over-preoccupied with the lack of a meaningful love life. One of the four primary characters really doesn't belong, and I was left hanging with the ending of Thomas's story. There is so much to love in the novel, however, and it's well work a read.

THE REGRETS was such a fantastic and unexpected little novel. I feel like I can sum this book up as the perfect explanation of why daydreams coming to life isn't always what you hope for. Thomas has died, but due to some clerical errors, he hasn't died completely and still has to roam the earth as a not quite fully formed human until he can get to heaven. Rachel, a librarian who lives a quiet life in Brooklyn and is known for daydreaming and falling for emotionally unavailable men, has an instant connection with Thomas and they embark on an ill advised love affair.

Yes, there is "ghost sex" and yes, it is intense and very well written. The chemistry between Thomas and Rachel is undeniable and sparks literally fly between the living and the dead as they come together. But Thomas is unreliable, as he physically disappears often and without warning, and tells Rachel from the beginning that he will leave soon but she does not know when or why. It is the perfect analogy for an intense love affair where the other person isn't quite there (emotionally or physically) but the love is intense and when he does disappear, he still sticks around as a ghostly figure you don't know how to get rid of. The story is real and the explanations of death are believable, but it is not a ghost story in the bigger sense of the word. It is about coming to terms with fantasy and dreams and then learning how to live in the "real world" once those fantasies have been shattered or once your daydreams are not what you expected.

THE REGRETS is really beautiful -- the writing is lyrical and surprising, and the story moves fast and unexpectedly. Doomed love affairs have always been a draw for me, and this is a modern and fantastical take that I really enjoyed. Highly recommend this book when it comes out in February 2020.

So the thing is, I actually really love all those beautifully crafted slice-of-life style observations that are prevalent in literary fiction, it's I just that I can't seem to get excited about them unless they're in the context of some weirdo fantasy setup. In that regard this book was just *chef kiss* perfect.

The story follows Thomas, a guy who had an encounter with an angel as a kid when the angel mistook him for a different boy she was there to collect. When he dies for real many years later, the angel that comes for him is (whoopsie!) the same angel, and it creates all sorts of clerical errors in the afterlife. Now for the next three months he's stuck on Earth in a body that looks like his but isn't, unable to contact people from his past life or make new connections lest he incur the dreaded "regrets". Complications happen, of course, in the form of Rachel, the girl at his bus stop who he becomes a little obsessed with.

So first of all, I (obviously) loved the writing in this- there are so many choice nuggets peppered throughout that the screenshots folder on my phone grew significantly over the course of the book. I loved the flawed characters and how they reacted within this strange context. I loved the odd, floaty charm of it all, and the low-key humor that had me smiling on more than one occasion.

I will say that I think this started a lot stronger than it ended, and part of that comes down to a narrative shift about halfway through the book that I don't think was totally successful. The momentum slowed down at that point and I ended up putting it down for a few days before picking it up again. I'm glad I did go back, though, as I do think it comes back around in the end and I found myself overall satisfied with where it all went.

Overall, though, I just really liked this book. Even though I'm not going to be going around telling everyone that they ABSOLUTELY MUST READ IT, I feel this soft spot inside that's filled with nothing but a warm, pleasant fondness for it.

I regret that I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. The premise is fantastic and I love a dark comedy - but I feel like something was missing. Perhaps I went in thinking it would be darker? More satire? Be even weirder, considering the synopsis? I think my wanting may also lie with some of the characters, who felt flat, aside from Thomas, who, for being dead, felt the most alive. Ultimately, I definitely appreciate what the author did here and I think my wanting comes not from her storytelling, but rather from me thinking it was going to be something else. Definitely still worthy of a library purchase and it is a great discussion piece.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC of this book that I received in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I will say upfront that I really liked the beginning of this novel. As it progressed, it lost a lot of the form that I found deliciously quirky. That wasn't a huge deal, but it was a loss. As the book continued, I became increasingly annoyed with Rachel, whose voice reads as very inauthentic to me. By the time the third perspective was added, the book lost me a bit as I felt that story contributed nothing to the narrative. The ending also fell flat for me.

This is a delightfully WEIRD novel, in the most delicious way possible. I adored every second. This reminded me of A Cosmology of Monsters, which I also adored. I’m really digging these horror romances... (or maybe I think romance is horrifying? Hmmm)

This is a charming dark comedy of someone stuck between 2 worlds. I found the book well written, but the idea rather trite. It has been portrayed so many times in movies and television.

These characters are especially likable and the setting familiar to me.

I just felt uncomfortable with the premise.

Thank you to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of The Regrets.

I was so excited when my request was approved.

I love ghost stories, the darker, macabre, and scary, the better.

The Regrets was more than that, though, not what I expected, but not in a bad way.

When Thomas is prevented from achieving his proper death due to bureaucratic red tape, his respite on earth for a few more months is shaken by the appearance of a young, beautiful woman named Rachel.

The two of them begin a strange, wondrous, convoluted, powerful but dangerous relationship that threatens Rachel's tenuous hold on herself, humanity and her place in it.

The author writes beautifully, including metaphors that straddle the line between tenderness and wit, hilarious dark comedic outlooks on life and the blunt, realistic descriptions of sex and lovemaking.

Actually, I was kind of surprised by how often sex is discussed. I was thinking of blood and ghosts, scares and thrills when I read the blurb, but that's just me. I'm a female Tim Burton.

But, I began to understand all the references to sex, because making love and intimacy is affirming you are alive, not dead. Lovemaking and sex is the antithesis to death.

It is one of ways we feel alive, when we are with someone else in the most intimate of ways. And yes, sometimes we seek sex just to connect in a world that's increasingly difficult to find someone to connect with.

I had hoped for more exposition on the business of death, such how a mistake like what happened when Thomas was young (no spoilers here!) could happen.

I mean, when you think about, how can a bureaucracy get something wrong that happens all the time for millennia 24/7?

I guess I answered my own question. It's a bureaucracy.

The Regrets isn't just about the regrets we all have in our life, no matter your age.

It's about the letting go. Moving on. Which is easier said than done.

And the first step is always the hardest.

Letting go isn't just releasing all the mistakes and deeds you wished you hadn't done or had done.

It's about being kind to yourself, to remember that we're human. We make mistakes. And we can go on if we give ourselves a chance.

And taking a chance is scary. Like life.

But, life is for the living so live while you can.

This isn’t like any love story you’re likely to read. And not just because one of the lovers is dead. Technically ghost lovers have been done before (cue in The Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody), but this is something radically new and strikingly good. The Romeo here is a recently dead man who due to a bureaucratic snafu in processing gets to have some more time on mortal coil, albeit circumscribed (no social interactions, daily reports, etc.). Eventually this gets to be unbearably tedious, like rules tend to, and he finds himself with a Juliet of his own, a young librarian with a questionable taste in partners. Love of books can send one dreaming of impossible romances, but eventually life sets in, especially when the entire affair has a rapidly approaching expiration date. Soon both find themselves holding on to something they really, really ought to let go off, albeit for different reasons. Love itself was easy enough, but moving on is going to be very difficult indeed. And so told from alternating perspectives, this is a story of two people and their brief passionate connection amid impossible circumstances. So as far as love stories go, that’s as epic as it gets…impossible circumstances. But there’s so much more here, it starts off in an offbeat manner of a dark comedy and slowly turns into something much more complex and involved, it’s a terrific character study and a clever (both metaphorically and observationally) take on relationships. It’s about social isolation and/or connectivity and choices one makes and, of course, regrets. A story about life, love and letting go…there’s that’s the generic tagline for the cinematic adaptation. It’s exceptionally well written (exactly the sort of writing that speaks to me), emotionally intelligent and very, very smart. The author’s had a collection of short stories (gotta find those) published, but this is her novel debut and what an auspicious debut it is. For me the narrative surpassed the characters and their eventual fates (as interested as I was in that), every so often a book just has that effect on a reader, the perfect engagement. So yeah. I loved this book. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.