Ghosted: An Unexpected Love Story

Ghosted was a hugely pleasant surprise for me. I received it as part of my July Book of the Month Club pick based on the tagline: “Seven perfect days. Then he disappeared. A love story with a secret at its heart.” It sounded like something I was going to like, but not necessarily something I was going to love.

Seven perfect days. Then he disappeared. A love story with a secret at its heart.

When Sarah meets Eddie, they connect instantly and fall in love. To Sarah, it seems as though her life has finally begun. And it's mutual: It's as though Eddie has been waiting for her, too. Sarah has never been so certain of anything. So when Eddie leaves for a long-booked vacation and promises to call from the airport, she has no cause to doubt him. But he doesn't call.

Sarah's friends tell her to forget about him, but she can't. She knows something's happened--there must be an explanation.

Minutes, days, weeks go by as Sarah becomes increasingly worried. But then she discovers she's right. There is a reason for Eddie's disappearance, and it's the one thing they didn't share with each other: the truth.

Why I didn’t think I was going to love Ghosted:

The tag line honestly makes it sound like a thriller. And in a lot of ways, it is a thriller. The beginning was terribly slow for me, because I do NOT like thrillers. Once the mystery is made apparent, I feel like every page, every side note, every everything is just in my way when I’m trying to figure out the answer. So I just couldn’t get into it, because I was so exasperated by the in-between stuff. At first.

The other side of the coin was that I didn’t think I was going to believe that someone could actually fall in love in one week. 

How Ghosted surprised me: 

I took me maybe a week to read the first 50 pages. It took me two days to read the remaining 300. Don’t get me wrong, I was dying to know why Eddie “ghosted” Sarah, but as I mentioned before, I was sooo frustrated by every page separating me from the answer that I couldn’t get into it initially. But once things got rolling, they really got rolling. 

Rosie Walsh did a remarkable job making the love story between the two characters very believable. Their motives, their inner dialogue, their actions towards one another don’t snag your attention in a bad way. They were seamless and just seemed to work. I totally bought all of it. There was one little snag with a side character that didn’t seem legit, but otherwise it was all good. View Spoiler »It was the whole situation with Hannah, Sarah’s sister. I don’t buy for one second that Hannah would never talk to her sister again because of what happened. Cutting ties with a sibling and tearing apart a family is not an easy thing to do, and this was not a good enough reason. Luckily, it’s a relatively minor part of the story, so it didn’t affect my rating that much. « Hide Spoiler

And then there’s the twists and turns (there are several of them!). Those were super fun, and highly unexpected. Walsh set these up really, really well.

But the bottom line of why I enjoyed this one so much? The love story. Yeah, the tagline says it’s a love story, but I didn’t expect it to be quite as sweet as it was. It has an immensely tender love story at its heart. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy and SO DESPERATE for Eddie and Sarah to figure things out.

So yeah, Ghosted is kind of thriller-esque, but really, it’s a sweet love story. And those are always my favorite things. 

I’d recommend for anyone who enjoys thrillers/love stories!

Have you read Ghosted? What were your thoughts?

A.S. Thornton

A.S. Thornton has evolved from book blogger to author with a particular fondness for writing forbidden love in ancient deserts. When not writing, she’s caring for dogs and cats as a veterinarian. You’ll never find animals at the center of her writing, though, because those fictional worlds don’t have veterinarians and her literal brain can’t accept that the poor critters would be without parasite prevention. Thornton’s debut, DAUGHTER OF THE SALT KING is available wherever books are sold.