“Maybe friendship is being the guardian of another person’s hope. Leave it with me and I’ll look after it for a while, if it feels to heavy for now.”

I’ll give you an idea of how much I was looking forward to reading Dolly Alderton’s debut novel: even though I pre-ordered my hardback copy long ago, I still rushed to hit the “request” button when I saw it appear on NetGalley.

Dolly’s memoir, Everything I Know About Love, is one of my favourite non-fiction books. I’ve read her articles, and I listen to the podcast she co-hosts with Pandora Sykes, The High Low, every week. In all honesty, I was a bit worried that Ghosts wouldn’t live up to my expectations.

Well, I needn’t have worried: Ghosts is wonderful. It’s not out until October, so I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s a story about love in all its forms. From the blurb, I thought Ghosts was going to be a straightforward story about dating gone wrong, when the main character, 32-year-old food writer Nina Dean, delves into the world of dating apps for the first time and gets “ghosted” by the first man she meets. But there are more ghosts than the man who disappears from the dating app: there are the ghosts of Nina’s childhood, the ghosts of her past relationship, and the ghosts of her oldest friendship.

Ghosts is a story about modern dating, yes, but it’s also a story about the ups and downs of long-term female friendships; about the love and enduring memories we build with our families, especially as they age; and about how women navigate adulthood and the question of children in their thirties. The characters felt deep and real, and it’s the kind of book you get so lost in that you forget you’re reading at all. So even though I’ve read it digitally, I’ll still look forward to my hardback copy arriving through the post in the autumn!

I was a big fan of Everything I Know About Love so when I heard that Dolly was releasing a novel I added it straight to my ‘Want to Read’ List and it didn’t disappoint. The story follows 32 year old Nina’s experiences dating and her relationships with her friends, parents and ex-boyfriend. I enjoyed how the story explored the relatable situations of relationships with friends who are in different stages of their lives (married with children) and the expectations placed on women in their late 20s/early 30s. I loved the characters observational humour particularly Nina, the main character, and her single friend Lola. Thank you Net Galley and Penguin/Fig Tree for the advanced digital copy.

Being in my 70s I'm probably the wrong age to read this book. However, the quality of the writing more than made up for the problems of 20 to 30 year olds. It's the first book of Alderton's that I have read, and I loved her clever knife edge observations.
Ghosting is not something I am familiar with and it sounds a thoroughly selfish thing to do to someone. Max seemed very self centred and rather unlikeable. For me , the best bits of the book were the relationship between Nina and her father, a gentle look at the problems of living with dementia.. Taking him back to Albyn Square was touching and meaningful. What a perfect summing up --" I think of everyone he loves as a gallery of Picasso paintings - in a constant stateof fascinating rearrangement rather than in the process of erasure"
Altogether an enjoyable book.
thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy.

I really enjoyed this! It took me a while to get used to the first person narration as it felt like I was reading a non-fiction piece from the author (and in my head the main character was Dolly for quite a while!) but besides that, I found it really well-written and a compelling story.

I thought the characters were interesting and believable and she writes particularly well about the nuances of friendship, especially long-term friendship and how things change as people's lives diverge from the same path. I found the storyline with Nina's father very touching, especially how it affects her relationship with her mother and how they try to cope with his illness in different ways.

The story itself isn't hugely original but the genuinely funny observational humour and astute descriptions of the little details of our interactions and relationships make the book feel fresh and interesting.

Thank you netgalley for another amazing book. Dolly Alderton's Ghosts is another must read for 2020.
32 year old Nina Dean appears to have her life together. Her dream career is on the rise, she's bought her own flat. But not quite everything is together, family dynamics are up in the air as her father's condition deteriorates, and her love life is non-existent, until she joins a promising dating app in the hopes to get her love life on the right track. Mr perfect sweeps her off her feet, but is it too good to be true?
Follow Nina Dean through the highs and lows of internet dating, neighbourly feuds and being left behind in your social circle as everyone else seems to be progressing to the next levels of the game of life faster. I didn't know it was possible to feel heartbroken and feel good at the same time until I read this book. I couldn't put it down.

Ooooft. Such delicious descriptions and metaphors in here, I have major writer’s envy!! Unlike a lot of books that rely on an explosive plot to maintain the reader’s interest, this story drops us in the midst of Nina’s 32nd year of life and ends at her 33rd. A single year - yet some of the most compulsive reading I’ve ever experienced!

You can tell Dolly delves deep into her characters, settings and situations because everything feels so seeped in background that you feel like you’re truly living it. Despite never having used a dating app in my life, I feel like I have shared PTSD now, haha!

I loved every page of this book. I laughed and I cried, and the characters are so strong and recognisable (I swear she must know my mother). I never quite knew what direction the story was going to go in - in a fantastic way - and I’m now very impatient for my friends to read it so we can discuss it when it comes out!

Favourite quote: “Hello?” Mum barked as she picked up the landline, harried and hassled, as if I were a PPI salesman calling for the fifth time in an hour.”

Just so relatable!!!

I loved everything about this book, they way Dolly writes is so honest and real, as a fellow 32 year old, I could completely relate to Nina and the ticking time bomb pressures that society puts on you all whilst navigating how to be an adult in this day and age with work, family, dating and social media, she's the friend we all need and want. It's everything you'd expect from Dolly, beautifully written and hits all the emotions.

Much like Dolly's memoir, I raced through this book in just a few days. I was so invested in the main character from the get-go and really could not put it down. It made me laugh and cry. Her observations of online dating and life in your early thirties were spot-on while the storyline about dementia was poignant moving.

As a person now in my late 20s (the horror!) Nina really resonated with me, being the single pringle amongst an ever growing larger amount of settled friends who have almost seem to expect for you transition your behaviour to their new standards. If I dare draw comparisons Ghosts is a modern day updated take of a Bridget Jones style novel on the manic lives we live, the pressure those of us in our late 20s and 30s face in terms of expectations of others, especially us ladies (being constantly reminded my eggs are a ticking time bomb by news articles is argh!). In a way Alderton's novel whilst clearly fictional has actually made me feel relieved, that the forced expectations are this horrific standard fare and that we are all battling life in our own way.
I devoured this book pretty quickly and am looking forward to grabbing a copy for my heavily full bookshelves when it releases in October, thank you NetGalley + the publisher for allowing me to have access to an advance copy.

Being a fan of Dolly’s, when I heard she was releasing a novel I couldn’t wait to read it and I was not disappointed. Equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking, I initially thought this was going to your typical romcom read but it was so much more than that. Very well written with a protagonist you just want the best for, and complex characters that are as infuriating as they are loveable (well... most of them anyway!). I couldn’t recommend this enough, I loved everything about it and didn’t want it to end.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced digital copy of the book in return for my honest review. This book is released in October 2020.

Having read Everything I know about Love, I was already familiar with Dolly Alderton's writing and storytelling style going into 'Ghosts', which I think made it a lot easier to get drawn into immediately.
The story is one that many of us can relate to, and even more so those of us who are female, in our 20s-30s and live in London. I tick all of those boxes, so a lot of the things described, experienced or felt by Nina and her friends are things that my own friends and I have experienced too.
I found the characters well written, not just the main character, but the supporting characters all had a depth to them that's also forgotten when it comes to secondary characters.

This was one of those stories that I stayed up far too late to finish because I just got really invested in what was happening. It's an easy read and despite dealing with some difficult topics (breakups, parenthood, Alzheimer's), manages to be light while still treating those topics with the respect they deserve.

Overall, a good read and one that'd be ideal for a rainy weekend.

This is an excellent novel and will get the attention it deserves. I was suspicious at first as there's quite a lot of unnecessary detail in the first twenty pages or so and it wasn't entirely clear where the story was going. But it massively picked up. Alderton writes beautifully and authentically about the late 20s/early 30s experience -- of reaching that time in your life where your female friends are "settling down" and there's an intense pressure to "grow up", ie submit to bourgeois mediocrity, even if you haven't found the right person to do that with. I'm sure a lot of people will relate to the depiction of dating -- its high time romanticized fuckboys were called out for what they are, which is pathetic, and Alderton does this eloquently. But I particularly like the way that the married friends were depicted. Those who refuse to settle down are often branded by their married friends as being "selfish", purely because they live a different lifestyle. But in fact the way that the conversation is dominated by babynames etc, how time is forcibly managed to fit around Mothers Busy Schedule, and the clear disdain for the single persons time (see: Katherine barging in at ungodly hours) often means it's skewed the other way. I hadn't seen this depicted before and found it interesting to think about.

The more I think about this book the more the small details and parallels come out to me -- from both Nina's and her mother's obsession with "names" (Mandy/George), as though they're trying to cleave to some false firm idea of their identity, to the ghost/physical juxtapositions (Angelo hovering outside the door, then being a real physical threat - also LOL) it's much more intricate than the light style implies.

Smart, funny and evocative without being *too* sentimental, this is an ideal comfort read and will resonate with many.

I love love love Dolly Alderton & was so excited to get this book. It did not disappoint. I loved the character of Nina I felt like she was a friend & could relate to her so much. I read this book in a few hours & it is genuinely one of my favourite books of 2020.

I was SO happy to get to read this so early as I am a huge Alderton fan, Everything I Know About Love is one of my favourite ever books, and Ghosts did not disappoint. Beautifully written, funny, characters that you fall in love with/drive you insane and such a fantastic story. I cannot fault it, after staying all night to finish. Pure brilliance.

Nina Dean is a thirty-something woman of our times. She is single, a cookery book writer and the friend we’d all like to have. Nina wants to find that certain someone who could be waiting out there for her, and at the instigation of one of her best friends, joins a dating app. Far from meeting the man of her dreams, who she thinks Max is, he ‘ghosts’ her.
At the same time, most of her friends are married, getting married or having babies, her mother is making herself over (with the help of her flashy friend) , and she and her mother are coping with Nina’s father increasing dementia.
If this all sounds depressing, take heart, this book has so much humour, great characters - including the man in the flat below who plays his music very loudly late at night, and may or may not be a psychopath.
I think most of us can relate to certain aspects of this book, and I found that Nina’s way of coping with her beloved father’s dementia was so touching and real.

Wow what a book. Thank you so much to Ms Alderton for writing this fantastic novel which I honestly believe looked into my soul on several occasions.
Nina is 32, successful and independent and yet there is something missing in her life. In spite of her aspirational life as a food writer owning her own flat in London with so many fantastic and meaningful friendships, she embarks on the new and traumatic experience of online dating while simultaneously watching her father slip into dementia.
The title refers to the juxtaposition of Nina's real life experience of her father's unintentional and tragic ghosting and the cruel example of Max's juvenile ghosting. It's not a spoiler I think to point out that Max is not the nicest of men.
Nina and her single friend Lola's experiences perfectly express the pressures on women in their early thirties (I am 31 and also about as on the shelf as a Jane Austen maiden aunt). We are all expected to be everything: sexy, funny, independent, homely, easy-going, footloose and not too full on. We certainly can't express our unattractive anxieties, wishes to find a partner and a settled home life, regardless of how much we dream of husbands, babies and home comforts. These women are in an impossible position, ostracised by their married friends and struggling to find love while their female gender continues to limit the time available left to them to experience their imagined futures as mothers unlike the men depicted here.
This novel points out the gender imbalances within society and relationships and how at heart we are all homesick for our own childhoods. I can't tell you how many times I've cried, saying "I want to go home" just like Nina and home is never the location I now live, but the memory of my childhood.
Thank you so much Ms Alderton for writing this novel, I honestly can't put into words what it has meant to me.

Dolly Alderton has a very strong style and this book feels quite autobiographical in a way.
Nina is a food writer who is trying to meet a man through online dating. The book is a romance novel in a way but it is also about family, female friendship and navigating your thirties..Nina wants to settle down and have children but she also wants to have fun with her friends and have her independence.
The relationship between NIna and her dad is touching as he has dementia, She uses food to jog his memories and to reassure him. I found these parts quite realistic and was well researched.
An easy but interesting book good for a holiday read.

4.5 🌟
I thoroughly enjoy Dolly Alderton’s writing and hope this is the first of many novels to come.

Ghosts is the tale of 32 year old Nina: single, successful and self-assured. I found her character so relatable as a 30-something singleton, also one of the last amongst my friendship group of mostly married couples with children.

Every single woman of this era will have experienced something similar to both Nina and Lola, such an accurate, funny and, at times, devastating account of online dating.

Alongside the tale of friendship, work and love, was also that of family dynamics and the tragic decline of Nina’s Dad to dementia. The way Dolly Alderton writes about memory is veracious: “It’s so hard to trace which memories are yours and which ones you’ve borrowed from photo albums and family folklore and appropriated as your own.”

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin/Fig Tree for this early proof copy.

Good in parts.
Some of this book is very funny, some of it is rather hackneyed (Bridget Jones meets Fleabag) and some of it is just bewildering.
There are some very touching descriptions of Nina trying to cope with her father's descent into dementia, but a lot of the time I found Nina and her friends rather irritating.
Perhaps a 30-something reader would enjoy it more...

Ghosts is a great read which I can imagine would be perfect to take on holiday and read on the beach. It’s an easy debut novel which you can dip in and of and not get overwhelmed with.

Ghosts is about Nina, who is in her early thirties and is trying to work out online dating. She is the ‘single’ friend. She doesn’t have children, isn’t married and her friends identify her by that, even though she is so much more. Nina is a powerful woman, she’s an author, she writes newspaper columns, has her own flat, is independent and overall enjoys being single.

Ghosts is essentially about being ghosted, not only ghosted by men she builds relationships with on dating apps, but about how her friendships fizzle out, and her relationship with her parents is reshaping as they age. Everything is changing and Nina is trying to keep up, the last thing she needs is to be ghosted by men on the dating app Linx.

Alderton covers topics of dementia, heartbreak, friendship and seeing her ex-partner of 7 years marrying someone new – and going to their wedding, in such a comical and sensitive way that makes you empathise with Nina. I think this is relatable book for almost anyone who has used dating apps and Max, one of the men Nina meets on her app, is a character that we probably all know too well.

Overall, I found this a really enjoyable read, I went into it with high hopes and was not left disappointed. I loved how the characters weren’t perfect, their lives were all so different and they all had their own problems to sort out. This was a really engaging, light read with lots of emotion and heartfelt moments.