This is a charming book with the potential to completely devastate you. We follow Nina Dean, a food writer who's fed up with the dating scene, as she navigates online dating, friendships, and her father's deteriorating health. The story isn't a fairy tale by any means and reads more like a story your friend would tell you over drinks. That realism is refreshing and subverts your typical romcom expectations, but does mean that the book is a bit less entertaining as a result. But big points for the care that it gives to the storylines with Katherine and Bill!

*Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review*

NetGalley provided an ARC for this book. Thank you.

It took me a little while to get into this book not because it was bad, mostly because i am a mood reader. BUT i am so glad i bucked up and read it. Ghosts was/is such an amazing read! I felt like i was reading 21 century Bridgette Jones(i love Bridgette Jones)
We are introduced to Nina, a woman in her 30s, trying to live life as she makes a successful career for herself. We get to tag along on her journey to find love, her acceptance of her family struggling with her dads progressing illness, and trying to find a place in her friendships. By the end of the book i was happy that Nina FINALLY spoke her truths to every single person she was holding her feelings back from. Her mother with her approach to her father's care and the resulting closeness Nina and her mother found in their relationship. Katherine and what a dingbag she was acting like in her pursuit of motherhood perfectionism and how she got to reunite with an old self that she never really wanted to get rid of, bring her back to Nina and their life long friendship. Her acceptance of quirky Lola and their perpetual singlehood, i'm so glad they had each other in a society of "you must tic this list of boxes to be a socially accomplished woman" bullshit. Can i just say i called it qhen we first met Angelo and what would happen(i still gasped)!? And don't get me started and Max and Jethro!!! Perfect examples of what the dating pool of males is filled with these days. Nina couldn't get her catharsis with Max but i'm glad she could with Jethro even if it was on behalf of Lola.
The ending was perfect. Nina, 30something, single, successful and blisfully happy with where she was in life at the exact moment.

This was a very hard read. The style of writing makes it difficult and confusing to figure which character or what's happening.

I guess when I pick up a book in the romance genre, I just want... romance. I don't want things that make me sad (and aren't quickly solved) or leave me depressed when I finish the book. Maybe if this was solely listed as women's fiction, I would have gone into it not expecting so much. I enjoyed the main character but felt this dealt with a lot of dark themes and was not the happy, escapist read I'm looking for in summer. It tied up a little too quickly and neatly given how drawn out the difficult themes were. This book needed some editing to balance the hard stuff vs the fun stuff and move the plot along in a more steady manner.

First book I have read by Dolly Alderton and I love her writing style. This is about 30 something year old Nina that is a successful food writer. She gets her own flat and decides she wants to start dating again. Her friend Lola gets her on the dating app Linx and there she meets several men. Max is the one that she is with for the most part until he ghosts her. I was so ready for her to move on! I wanted Nina and Lola to both be stronger women then what they were. Lola couldn’t stop watching her phone to see what the guy was doing that had just ghosted her. The part about Nina’s dad having Dementia was spot on, and her mom not dealing with it was really sad. I also loved the part about Nina’s neighbor downstairs and how she stole his packages.

I received this ARC for free from Netgalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I received this ARC for an honest review. This is my first book from Dolly Alderton. What I thought about it was ok. I kept putting it down to read other books and I would read it again between other books. I know this will sound mean, but I saw this book as something to read while waiting for another book. Well, give it a try you might like it more than I did.

PSA: GHOSTS is not, a repeat NOT, a Romantic Comedy regardless of what the synopsis says. Nonetheless!! I loved this novel - it's witty, edgy and utterly unique. Nina is ok with being single. She has a satisfying career, a healthy relationship with her ex, she's a supportive daughter to her aging parents, and a devoted friend. Love throws her for a loop when she dips her toes back in the dating pool and finds the perfect match in Max. They quickly settle into a committed relationship (led by Max, I might add) when he ups and ghosts her. I found myself reading this from the perspective of Nina's friend....cheering for her, wincing a lot, and hoping for the best. GHOSTS is perfect for a reader looking for a unique story about modern love. If you enjoyed Normal People or Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, you'll LOVE this.

Single, independent and searching, 32 year old Nina tries to juggle her dating life, her friends, her parent's relationship and her father's declining grasp of reality all with minimal success. Finally succumbing to pressure to join a dating app after the breakup of her long term relationship with Joe, Nina meets Max, who seems perfect in every way. When Max suddenly disappears from Nina's life, without an explanation thus "ghosting" her, Nina has to re-evaluate her needs in life and whether or not Max, or any man, is worth the effort that women put into these relationships. The novel reads like a stream of consciousness with dips and dives into various friends' romantic (or lack thereof) relationships and the meaning of one's existence. It natters on about women's and men's roles in relationships and comes to the feminist conclusion that women do far too much work to make these relationships viable, while men are free to come and go without any emotional investiture or damage when it comes to an end. "Ghosts" had so much more potential; like the relationships Nina is exploring and discarding. This is a relationship that didn't make it past the first date.

Ghosts just wasn't my cup of tea. I plowed through it, hoping I would get to that magic point where I couldn't stop reading, but that didn't happen with this book. I didn't like or identify with any of the characters, and I had trouble understand the English slang, often having to google a term or phrase to know what it meant.

Dolly Alderton’s Ghosts is a year in the life of Nina George Dean. Alderton brilliantly portrays a cast of friends and family who celebrate, forget, love and sometimes loathe Nina. Thematically, the title refers to different types of ghosts that can haunt a person: there is the ghost of a romantic partner who stops responding, the ghost of who a parent once was as dementia takes hold of them, and the ghost you become to your friends as they become married and have children. Alderton beautifully weaves all three together into a brutally funny and heartfelt tale.

This book has made me feel that I just lived a full year of life through Nina’s eyes. I feel fitfully exhausted in the best way, and a bit unhinged like a need a good cry. I think, ultimately, what I’m trying to convey is that this book gifts you feelings and, for the right readers, gifts you with the notion of being seen.

I am truly in awe of how deftly Alderton puts words to the every day that accompanies being human (particularly a single woman in your thirties), but which still occupy all topics of conversation and surely most of the space shared between one and one’s therapist. In short, this book is like life itself, you should try it. Don’t go in with any high expectations, and see how you feel afterwards.

As with all of my reviews: If you loved - Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood or Writers & Lovers by Lily King - you’ll enjoy this book.

Ghosts is an engaging, relatable, atypical romance. Dolly Alderton is an amazing and eloquent wordsmith, my heart soared reading the vocabulary choices in this novel. Ghosts portrays many difficult coming of age subjects, how we meet and part with our love partners. Friends growing apart and hopefully sometimes back together. And struggles with aging parents. It was a wonderful and adult take on modern romance.

I’d never read #DollyAlderton before, and actually grabbed her latest, #Ghosts, on a whim. And wow, I really, REALLY wasn’t ready for the emotional terrorism that this extremely sharp novel wrought on my brain/heart/all of the above. Seriously, wow.📱

A bit Bridget Jones-y, though more acerbic and a touch more bitter, it follows London-based food writer Nina George Dean over the course of her 31st year as she contends with the evolution of a number of important relationships: with her best friends, with her ailing father and struggling mother, with a new boyfriend, and with her career. It took me a hot minute to get into it, but once I immersed myself in Nina’s world I felt home (uncomfortably so) thanks to Alderton’s writing style.📱

Chapter after chapter, I kept coming back to the title of the novel: ‘Ghosts,’ of course, at first seemed like a not-so-subtle nod to “ghosting” (a term Nina comes to understand well — same, girl). But then I found myself changing my perspective as I read through it — to me, this book is also very much about what happens when we exorcise the ghosts of our younger, former selves, the ones we need to leave behind as we grow with (and out of) some of our most important relationships.📱

Oh, ANNNNNDDD I dated potentially the biggest fuckboi on the planet in college, and oooohhh man, one of the characters in this really brought back some memories 🙃 But yeah, anyway, you should read this!📱

This was my first Dolly Alderton and will not be my last. For me, her voice rivals that of Sally Rooney — Alderton's ability to write such human romantic experiences feels distinctive and fresh. For a couple years as an adult I avoided romances; I think because I thought I had to 'take myself seriously' as an adult reader or something. I know that is baseless, but that's where I was at. Reading books like "Ghosts" reminds me why that opinion of mine was an antiquated one — and that love and rom-com can be challenging, inspiring, important. I really loved this.

Also I'm not even sure if the description even matches at all, but for the entire novel, I was picturing Nina as Alison Roman. Both very vibrant, food-focused ladies. Lol.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for my copy of this.

My thanks to Net Galley for this book in exchange of my honest review. Ghosts is funny, sad, nostalgic and absorbing. The story is about friends who are in different stages of their lives and the protagonist, Nina, looking, for love after being ghosted by the one who she thinks is perfect. The underlying theme of the book is obviously ghosts, ghosts of past friendship, ghosts of memories, ghosting dates, ghosting fathers, etc. In the end only friendships seem to be the rock that Nina could fall back on. A realistic story told in an engaging way!

Wow, was this mis-labeled. I was expecting a frothy romcom with wit and laughter, which is what I want to read as the quarantine slows down. What I got was very well written and stylish, but ultimately depressing. I am not fond of reading about Alzheimer's in fiction--I am surrounded by people suffering it in real life.

But that was a side issue to Nina's sense that nothing really matters or means anything, we just move dully through life, and the fight with her once bestie was just depressing. The details are expertly realistic and tend to grind one's face in existential uncertainties, not what I want in fiction. I can get that every day by turning on the news.

Again very well written, but mis-marketed, not what I wanted to read. Another reader will love it, I'm sure.

There are some things I loved about this novel and some things I didn't love - It's the story of Nina George Dean and her search for love. Is that it? She meets a guy on a dating app and falls in love..but it doesn't work out. She's also dealing with all of her friends getting married or having babies and her parents aging and dealing with illnesses. Would be a great beach read - not going to be one on my end of year lists, but good!

I have been ghosted by a guy-I know I'm not alone. That's why I was eager to read Alderton's fictionalized experience of romance gone very wrong and she did not disappoint. When I first read it I thought it would be another British snarky rom-com a la Brigitte Jones but it absoloutely wasn't Beginning with her ex's weddiing it explored friendships and family and the process and importance of memories-especially through her character Nina's sadness as her father fades into dementia. Nina experiences true love with Max until he ghosts her and she tries to understand the flaws that she must have had to drive him away with no explanation. When her best friend is also ghosted, she takes action, and puts the blame squarely on the one who deserves it. There is a lot of growth in this book and it is very realistic-which I liked. Gave me a new perspective on things in my life that happened long ago.

The first chapter of this book was SO well-written and had me laughing out loud at the main character's descriptions of her friends (it reminded me a lot of Marian Keyes, who I adore). But then it was just kinda meh from there on out. It was a cute story, but I felt like Nina and Lola talked in circles and whined a little too much about being single. And the subplot with Nina's father made me really sad.
I will say this - the fight at the restaurant between Nina and Katherine was so real to me. Nina said everything I have always wanted to say to the Katherines of the world, and that was my favorite part of the entire book.
I liked this but didn't love it, and would recommend it to others as such.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group!

Thanks to NetGalley I was lucky to receive an advance copy of Ghosts by Dolly Alderton in exchange for my honest review and opinions. This was a really fun book to read! It contained laughter, lots of emotions such as: happiness, sadness, heartbreak. I found this to be a well written book about friendship, family and love.

Ghosts by Dolly Alderton is a tale about being thirty, changing your life's work from teaching to writing full time, and online dating when all your friends except Lola are partnering up, getting married, and having children. In the meantime, her father's dementia is robbing him of his memories, and he is reverting to his childhood; he is a ghost of himself. Her mother is not handling the possibility of losing her husband and having a midlife crisis. Nina starts dating a guy called Max, who romantic and says all the right things until he's Zombieing. Lola, the perpetual dater who knows all the tricks, helps Nina with all the dating rules but seems to fall into the same rut. There seems to be a lot of nothingness in this story, and sometimes it can be monotonous.