Wonderful. I mean, this book is precisely what it says on the tin (it's a ghost that's a fish that's also someone's dead sister, what more do you want?), a simple magical realism concept with enough of a twist to be intriguing and a vibrant enough execution to feel full and complex.

I was immediately pulled into Alison's world and voice: I finished the novel in two sittings within one day, and it's been a while since I've done that, even with a short novel like this. Some of it is the fact that it was a really nice day out and there are few pleasures like reading by an open window, caught in the breeze and the ray of sunshine beaming in. But this novel is particularly well-designed for it: There's a perfect balance between comfort and conflict, as the main character obviously carries significant grief and trauma with her and the city she lives in can seem like a malignant force (at least as far as we are embedded in her perspective, but seriously the more books set in New York I read, the less I ever want to live there), but she also finds tenderness along the way and you want nothing more for her to give into it rather than shrink away from anything good.

That tension, I think, is what kept me turning the pages even when I'd told myself I'd stop reading at the end of the hour and so on. Sometimes as a reader you feel like you have the power to drive the character toward the conclusion they deserve.

The novel hits some turbulence in its second part, seemingly struggling to land gracefully. Maybe that's okay. Maybe a perfectly executed symbolic end isn't right for this story, and a bit of chaos is more fitting. Nevertheless, the characterization of secondary characters takes a hit, and the whole structure of the novel is practically designed to lead to an information dump, for better or for worse. This may prevent the novel from meeting my wildest hopes, but it certainly doesn't prevent me from loving it. Gorgeous, resonant work, and Stuart Pennebaker is certainly one to watch. Whatever she writes next, I'm in.

One of the best literary fiction works of the year. It was thoughtful and brought me to tears. I loved the story, its message and the portrayal of grief. It felt real, tangible. Anybody who has/is grieving would love this book. A perfect five stars. Full review to come soon.

Haunting and beautiful portrait of grief. I really enjoyed this book and how it reminds us that you can always try again. Lovely!

Such a sweet and heartwarming story about losing a loved one and working through loss! Great work Stu

Ghost Fish captured my attention right away. I felt the grief come off the page as we meet the main character for the first time. I could also feel her bravery through Stuart's well-crafted words. When it comes time to introduce the Ghost Fish, I was ready for the turn the story took. I thought the book reminded me of Shark Heart, and I loved that title. I think this will be an excellent book club choice. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This remarkable book brought me to tears. I won’t describe the story, which is so beautiful and so beautifully written that another reader must experience it for themself. In a nutshell, it’s a rumination and meditation on grieving, surviving, and ultimately thriving. And a young woman who realizes that she is not alone and how wonderful it is to be cherished.

Ten huge stars. Stuart Pennebaker has written a beautiful novel. I hope she writes more, because I would gobble them up.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the pleasure and privilege of reading this advance reader’s copy.

ghost fish is a visceral and punching book that reflects heavily on grief. anyone who has a sibling, especially one they’re close to, will probably understand the chaotic and frantic inner thoughts of the protagonist, alison, after her sister dies by drowning. alison feels alone and is still trying to deal with the loss of her sister when a ghost fish suddenly appears to her. while at first she recognizes it can’t possibly be real, she begins to feel a duty to protect the ghost fish, as she feels she couldn’t protect her sister.

whereas some novels with purple prose get lost on me, this one shines through. the poetic and flowery writing reflects the mind of our protagonist. to me, it reflects alison’s slow descent into what can only be described as “madness”.

this novel is a great testament to how grief can impact us, it can change our lives and make us feel and do things we didn’t think were possible. the loss of a person so important to you is unthinkable until it happens and pennebaker encapsulated that perfectly.

the concept is really out there and there’s aspects of magical realism that reel you in and keep you on the edge of your seat. it is a short book but i think it started to drag a bit in the middle; there’s only so much you can do with the concept of a grieving woman seeing and taking care of a ghost fish. but either way, this is an astounding debut from pennebaker, and i’m looking forward to future novels from her.

thank you to little, brown and company for an ARC of this novel provided through netgalley!

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A woman navigates life alone after she lost her sister.

This was a delight to read. It is a fairly simple and intriguing premise—a grieving and lonely young woman suddenly sees her dead sister as a ghost fish—that is executed well. The writing is lovely and Alison is an endearing character.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.

Amazing debut and absolutely gorgeous, will be lining up for a copy on release day. Writing and characterization was strong, and I appreciated how simply some actions and decisions were described. I was so impressed with the whole thing and how it came together. Really looking forward to more from this author.

I really loved the concept of this novel, which was a quirky way of dealing with grief - the protagonist's sister reappears to her as a fish she carries around in a jar as she moves to New York City and tries to find her footing in the wake of her sister's death. It seemed like it was going to be a weird book, which are my favourites, yet it was surprisingly somehow not as weird as I hoped/wanted it to be. This is a quiet book and I don't mean that as a negative - it was a relatively quick read and at the end, I felt both the character's grief and closure. I wanted more and got less, and yet less somehow worked in this scenario.

tender, well done, effective story about coping with grief, recovering from loss, and becoming yourself. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

Ghost Fish was surprisingly grounded for how fantastical the concept. Such a moving portrayal of grief and finding your place in the world. Our main character, Alison, reminding me so much of myself when I was young. In another review recently I spoke of moving alone to a big city and how scary that can be. But in Alison’s case, she doesn’t even really know if moving was what she wants because she doesn’t know how to live for herself anymore.

Watching her grow over the course of this short and sweet novel brought me to tears more than once. Never did I think I would sob over an empty pickle jar!

I was not prepared to tear up over an empty pickle jar.

This was a captivating and heavy story of grief. I was overwhelmed by its portrayal of how we cope and who we confide in. It centers so heavily around the loneliness we feel when we've lost someone we love, and the things we'll do to bring ourselves comfort. I don't think I relate much to Alison's character, but anyone can empathize with the weight of loss. And then I cried over a pickle jar.

I love magical realism and was immediately hooked by the premise of this book. At first I thought it might be a bit silly (the main character quite literally sees a ghost fish materialize by her front door and somehow it immediately reminds her of her sister), BUT it was such a touching story about grief, sisterhood, and letting go.. I cried at the end. The story itself has a simple enough plot & resolution, but the sense of loss, the desire to belong, and the love between siblings are all so well-written that I didn’t need a complicated plot to be fully invested.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

When Alison moves to New York City, she's flailing. She's grown up without a father, lost her mother at a young age, and is still reeling from the loss of her younger sister who drowned when taking a swim at sea a year ago. Despite having no plan though, she's able to find a tiny, cheap apartment in the Lower East Side to move into with roommates, and is able to get a job as a host at The June, a hotel restaurant. But when she returns home one night after work, Alison encounters an unexpected apparition: a faint, almost illusory image of a fish floating in front of her, who she immediately believes is the ghost of her younger sister and keeps in a pickle jar filled with tap water.

As months pass, Alison becomes more and more convinced this ghost fish that no one else can see is truly her sister, having conversations with it and hearing her sister's voice echo back in her head. It poses a slight impediment in her day-to-day life however, as she frequently carries the pickle jar with her, including when she leaves for work. Surprisingly for Alison though, her host job becomes more than just a means to pay the bills as she grows closer to her coworkers, including Gabrielle, who works as a server at The June. Despite her best attempts, Alison can't help but be drawn in by her character and personality, including the unknown story of Gabrielle's apparent wealth despite her job. All the while, Alison continues to hold the secret of her sister to herself - until it becomes too heavy of a burden to bear alone.

I have to say for a debut novel, I was blown away by Stuart Pennebaker's storytelling. The novel is told from Alison's first-person perspective, and despite the initial detachment she seemed to have for her own life and situation, her voice quickly grew and me and started to evolve as the novel continued. Pennebaker so accurately captures the gritty, unglamorous life of moving to NYC as a young 20s something woman, especially without money or connections, and the expedited maturing and coming to terms that it entails, especially with the people we keep. I loved as well her use of magical realism to capture a representation of grief and loss, and the letting go that's required when accepting the death of a loved one.

Very much a recommended novel when "Ghost Fish" is published in August 2025!

"Ghost Fish" follows Alison, a 23-year-old orphan, and not just in the literal sense, having lost her mother at a young age and every other immediate family member since, but also emotionally, as someone completely, achingly alone. Stuart Pennebaker’s writing captures her loneliness and isolation with striking clarity. From a small Southern town, Alison relocates to New York City, where she encounters the ghost of her deceased sister; reincarnated, unexpectedly, as a fish.

This novel uses magical realism as a powerful lens through which to explore grief, longing, and the search for meaning after profound loss. I’ve read many books about grief, but none have resonated with me quite like this one. As someone who has also lost all of my immediate family, I felt deeply seen by Alison’s story. The sensation of floating unmoored in the world with no clear “home” left is captured here with raw honesty and beauty.

I wanted to reach into the pages to comfort Alison, to tell her she wasn’t alone. But Pennebaker allows her to find her own way, and I felt honored to walk that journey alongside her and her ethereal sister-fish. This novel is tender, strange, and deeply moving. A beautiful, unforgettable read. I'm really looking forward to whatever Pennebaker does next.

It took quite a while for me to get into Ghost Fish, but I'm glad I kept with it - the payoff was well worth it! I'm not going to lie; sometimes this book was a gut punch, and you just really wanted to pull Alison out of the book to give her a warm hug. It was, at times, a difficult read as it deals with loss and loneliness as well as the depression that often goes hand in hand. But it's also about coping with these difficult emotions, sometimes in unique ways, and allowing yourself the grace to find friendship and support in the midst of that turmoil. Ghost Fish is also about finding the courage to realize that letting go and truly living your life is not forgetting or lessening your loss but honoring it.

I would definitely encourage readers to try this book and stick with it; I'm still surprised at how much it resonated with me.

Oh. My heart. I cried at least 5 times and smiled just as many. By the end I was a sobbing mess and could barely see the page. You know, crybaby things.

What's interesting to me about Ghost Fish (besides the ghost fish) is how Pennebaker is able to create such a rich, emotional character with such little space. Alison is so relatable to not only those who have experienced grief, but those who have experienced profound loneliness. Though Ghost Fish is about overcoming grief, it's also a story about the experience of young adulthood; finding your own identity, learning to trust, setting boundaries, being vulnerable.

I loved how the beginning of the book has an almost rote mechanical feel. Alison is so stuck in her own mind that she exists on autopilot, going through the motions of work, coming home, avoiding people. The dissociative feeling of the narration gives us such an insight into Alison's state of mind that juxtaposes with how she feels during her time with her sister's ghost fish, and how she feels at the end of the novel. You can feel the shift in Alison's inner world, not in a disorienting way, but in a way that mirrors how it feels to learn to trust, open up, and be alive.

Alison's experience of young adulthood really hit me in the heart. Your early twenties are messy, confusing, fun, scary, lonely, overwhelming... Pennebaker captures all of that and more.

It's a testament to Pennebaker's writing skill that the relationship between Alison and her sister feels whole and real, even though we never once meet her sister in human form. The writing is sneaky in the best possible way. She evokes emotion and memory in a way that creeps up on you, hidden in lines that are deceptively simple but hit emotionally after you've already moved past it. There were times I would read a line, process what it said after I'd already moved on, then go back and reread it to really take in the emotional weight of it.

Pennebaker's writing is subtly poetic in all the right places, never veering into flowery or purple. In just one line, she can set the tone, give an insight into Alison's current headspace, show a budding friendship, and provide energy to a scene that would otherwise feel stagnant. The imagery she uses is so intentional and evocative and makes the book, and Alison's inner world, feel truly alive.

Though the plot itself is rather predictable, the journey to get there is stunning. Though Alison's experience of grief is emotionally sad, there's also an overtone of hope, of finding the light again, of learning to be okay even when it hurts. The latter half of the book is poignantly bittersweet and depicts such a real, human experience of healing. This book isn't about plot beats or neat endings, it's about feeling the full emotional weight of Alison's experience, and Pennebaker absolutely nails it.

Incredible debut, I can't believe this is Pennebaker's first published work. I'm a forever fan and can't wait to see what she does next.

(FYI, I'm a reviewer and this review appeared on my site, ringreads.com. I don't typically do author interviews, but I do typically promote on socials.)

It takes real skill to write a doorstop of a book that stays compelling from start to finish. It takes just as much, and maybe even more, to write a book that contains an impossibly rich story in a short span of pages. Ghost Fish, the debut from Stuart Pennebaker, is a great example of the latter.

At twenty-three, Alison has had enough loss and dead-ends for a lifetime. She leaves her late grandmother's dark and empty house and sets off for New York. Squeezed into a small apartment with too many roommates, Alison initially clings to Jen, a friend from back home and the only person she knows in the city, and quickly draws closer to Jen's hot friend Noah. But the shine from that could-be relationship quickly dims—especially after a strange, ghostly fish appears in her apartment that Alison instantly knows is her sister who died five years before.

This ghost fish can't say much from the water-filled pickle jar Alison keeps it in, but her sister's meaning is clear in every wave of her fin and blink of her fishy eyes. Soon, Alison is racing back to her little room every chance she gets, turning down hang-outs with Noah and leaving the second she clocks out from her new job as a hostess at a pretentious hotel restaurant. Despite this, she finds herself developing unexpected connections with her new coworkers, and even her roommates. It doesn't take long to realize she can't build a life for herself and tend to this echo of her sister floating in a jar on her windowsill.

The real triumph of Ghost Fish is how immersive it is. Opening up this slim novel gives the feeling of unknowingly sinking into cool, deep water; closing brings you back to the surface, gasping for air. Pennebaker skillfully blends small details with the towering landscape of New York or the lapping water of Key West to make the background feel as lifelike as its characters. Jen, Alison's only friend in New York, is both a ride-or-die friend and a school-days pal whose relationship has run its course. Her roommates are an odd and insular group, but maybe less insular than Alison initially gives them credit for. It would be easy to make them one-note characters, but Pennebaker respects them, and us, too much for that. Alison herself gives us observations are at once keen and distant, to the extent I wasn't sure how aware she was of a crush growing so obviously to the rest of us. She doesn't seem to see herself as the hero of her own story, but her imperfect view of herself is one that makes us feel for her, even if it's against her will.

Ghost Fish is a story of grief, but it's also a story of identity and starting over. Remembering a walk she took along the beach with her mother and sister—both dead and gone now—and seeing hundreds of dead horseshoe crabs. "My body was here, like the horseshoes on the beach, but if [my sister] couldn't be anything, I would be nothing, too," she says, even as she tries to make a new start for herself. The more she starts getting a tenuous hold on that new start, the better she can see how much she depends on her sister, and how that dependence might not be good for either her or her sister. Then again, knowing that and actually letting go are two very different things.

That tension is very relatable, even if you've never kept the fish ghost of your sister in a pickle jar on your windowsill. Ghost Fish is about grief, and about finding out who you are, and where you can be that purest version of yourself. It's a brief and strange but beautiful story that is more than worth your time.

Wow. Nothing tickles my fancy more than a book that’s premise seems odd and silly yet it completely cuts you to your core. It’s no secret this book is about grief. It’s raw, vulnerable and feels so incredibly real. Alison is alone and lost in her new reality and new town. We go along with her, as does the ghost fish, as she navigates how she fits into this new world. It’s not smooth sailing, I’ll leave it at that. I’m shocked that this is a debut because it was written succinctly yet beautifully. It’s full of heartbreak and hope from beginning to end. Navigating grief is a universal event, yet it’s always such a personal and individualized journey. Pennebaker did a fantastic job at capturing that essence. I cannot wait to see what he writes next.

Ghost Fish is one of those books that sneaks up on you. It's an engaging read, but you're not turning pages as quickly as you can just to see what happens next. You're just *being* there (as opposed to moving through). Alison, the central character, is a bit adrift. Her mother died when Alison was a child; her sister died when Alison was in her teens; and now Alison's last living relative, her grandmother, has died. Alison doesn't know exactly what she wants, but she knows she needs change—so she moves to New York City, rents a "room" (it used to be a bit of hallway) in a four-person household, and gets a job as a hostess at a hotel restaurant.

There are plenty of solid directionless-but-getting-by-in-New-York-City novels. What makes this book surprising is that Alison finds someone who gives her purpose: an invisible fish, an invisble ghost fish only she can see and who she is convinced is her sister returned to her. Now Alison has someone to talk to, to come home to, to care for.

But there are problems—
• Even in NYC you can stick out if you take a jar of water for walks in the park.
• The conversations are one sided: Alison can tell her ghost fish/sister anything; sister can only blow bubbles, bob up and down, and wave her fins.
• Alison finds she would rather sit in her room with her ghost fish/sister than meet her actual apartment mates.

Pennebaker never invites us to question this odd situation. Alison is sane and solid, living life as she experiences it. And, while there's a great deal going on, the pace of the novel remains relatively gentle. We're not here to question Alison's choices or see her the way others may see her. We're here to spend some time walking alongside her.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

I featured Ghost Fish in my August 2025 new releases video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq3pme6mIno&t=858s and though I have not read it yet, I am so excited to and expect 5 stars! I will update here when I post a follow up review or vlog.

I really enjoyed this poignant novel. Alison is an immediately sympathetic protagonist, and I enjoyed traveling along with her as she finds her way.

Some of the restaurant scenes (she finds work as a hostess) are a bit tiresome/repetitive, particularly around the 40% mark, but the friendship that develops between Alison and Gabrielle is beautiful to watch. Alison's relationship with the ghost fish/her sister is quirky and sweet. Alison is young but we are cheering for her to find her way. The author does a remarkable job of characterization as we get to know the other people who work at the restaurant and whom Alison encounters in the city. My favorite moment was when Alison and Gabrielle are in Key West, and Alison confesses to her about the ghost fish. Gabrielle's reaction is such a beautiful response.

There are a couple moments toward the end that came across as a little cheesy, especially for what had otherwise been a relatively serious literary novel. But overall this is a charming and memorable novel perfect for fans of literary fiction. I admire the shorter length which fits the story perfectly.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance e-galley; all opinions in my review are 100% my own.

A perfectly-paced, emotionally rich novel about how to keep living, when it feels as though you have been given every reason not to -- when it feels impossible to.

The writing in here was divine. Every book I open is one in which I hope to find exactly what I did within these pages. Gorgeous, fluid writing, characters you can step into and zip yourself up inside, a home in the shape of a novel.

One of the truly rare times in which I would have kept reading this for hundreds of pages, but I also feel completely satisfied with the way it closed. A new favorite!