Review: Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore

Title: Rules for Ghosting

Author: Shelly Jay Shore

Publisher: Dell

Length: 384 Pages

Category: Literary Fiction, Romance

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: If you enjoy literary fiction that does a deep dive into what motivates its characters, what tears them apart and reunites them, and how families can be both those we’re born into and those we choose to belong to, Rules for Ghosting is a big-hearted and thoughtful read.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which made growing up in a funeral home complicated. It might have been easier if his grandfather’s ghost didn’t give him scathing looks of disapproval as he went through a second, HRT-induced puberty, or if he didn’t have the pressure of all those relatives—living and dead—judging every choice he makes. It’s no wonder that Ezra runs as far away from the family business as humanly possible.

But when the floor of his dream job drops out from under him and his mother uses the family Passover seder to tell everyone she’s running off with the rabbi’s wife, Ezra finds himself back in the thick of it. With his parents’ marriage imploding and the Friedman Family Memorial Chapel on the brink of financial ruin, Ezra agrees to step into his mother’s shoes and help out . . . which means long days surrounded by ghosts that no one else can see.

And then there’s his unfortunate crush on Jonathan, the handsome funeral home volunteer . . . who just happens to live downstairs from Ezra’s new apartment . . . and the appearance of the ghost of Jonathan’s gone-too-soon husband, Ben, who is breaking every spectral rule that Ezra knows.

Because Ben can speak. He can move. And as Ezra tries to keep his family together and his heart from getting broken, he realizes that there’s more than one way to be haunted—and more than one way to become a ghost.

Review: Don’t be fooled by this book’s whimsical cover art. Rules for Ghosting is quite a few things: a family drama, a story about faith, about loss and grief, about love and acceptance, about connection and crisis and renewal. Reading this book is like binge-watching a cast of people in a near-constant struggle to simply exist without some form of internal and/or external conflict every day.

And it’s lovely and tender and heartwarming.

Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which doesn’t bode well for him, what with his family’s funeral business sitting right across the yard from their home. Ezra refused to be involved with it as soon he was old enough to run, though he never admitted to his parents or siblings why. Seeing the ghosts of the deceased roaming the halls of the chapel was too much to ignore and too impossible to confess. This isn’t a ghost story, though, not in the haunting sense. It’s a ghost story in the spiritual sense, and of one ghost in particular who breaks all of Ezra’s carefully curated rules about how spirits should behave in the afterlife.

Much of Ezra’s conflict can be boiled down to one simple sentence:

“He can never tell who he should be prioritizing to keep everyone happy.”

Ezra is a people pleaser, and he’s got a savior complex a mile wide. If he can help he won’t hesitate, even if it means his peace comes last, even if it means getting involved in the funeral business after his mother drops a bomb that decimates the family. He wants to fix whatever he can fix. Sometimes he wants to fix things he simply can’t. It’s not wrong to say that Ezra himself is ghosting through life, so it’s not until he learns that he can prioritize himself a little bit, too, that his world can right itself and he can move forward.

The romance in Rules for Ghosting is subtle. It doesn’t ignite and burn. It’s restrained and cautious and gentle. It’s a character study and a commentary on the importance of communication. It’s one of close, though unexpected, proximity. And then there’s the yearning, so much yearning. Ezra and Jonathan are both weighed down by their own hardships and anxieties, though, despite the sincere deep attraction to each other. Jonathan is a widower whose husband died in a tragic accident, and he’s still grieving. And Ezra is trying to be everything to everyone else.

If you enjoy literary fiction that does a deep dive into what motivates its characters, what tears them apart and reunites them, and how families can be both those we’re born into and those we choose to belong to, Rules for Ghosting is a big-hearted and thoughtful read.