** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE ** 

 Copy received through Netgalley 

 ~ 

 Rules for Ghosting, by Shelly Jay Shore 

★★☆☆☆ 

 400 Pages 

 present tense, 3rd person, single character POV 

 Content Warning: mentions of death, grief, loss, child death, ghosts, haunting, the Holocaust 

 Mentions of trans MC who uses binders, transitioning, packers and hormone treatment 

 Reps: queer MC, trans MC, Jewish heritage 

 ~ 

 DNF'd at 30% (approx 118) 

 Pros: cover, blurb, so many great reps 

 Cons: boring, unnecessarily long, rambling memoir style plot 

 Sadly, for me, the book spent far too long focusing on the wrong things. I saw too much of what I didn't need/want to see, and nothing of the parts that actually interested me. Ezra could have been an interesting POV – trans, right in the midst of a transition, queer, Jewish, reluctantly working for his family funeral home, and he can see ghosts! – but we don't need to see every errant thought in his head 100 of the time. We also don't need repeated reminders of those thoughts at every available opportunity. 

 There were a few “twists” in the pages I read, but rather than being exciting and plot twists, they feel like an unnecessarily complicated way of forcing the plot towards a predetermined outcome. In my opinion, there were easier and quicker ways to accomplish these plot switch-ups. Actually, I would say that the story could/should have started at Chapter 4. The story wouldn't have lost anything by starting there, but it would have gotten to the crux of the plot with less wavering. In fact, there were too many times when the plot wandered off in a pointless direction, reminiscing, recapping and drifting when it should have stuck with the essence of the plot. Instead of doing that, it tries to force too much into way too many pages when the main story could have benefited from being 200 pages of a more concise plot. Because it tried to do too much, it didn't successfully accomplish any of the things it tried to do, which is a real shame, because there is SO much potential in the plot and characters. 

 For me, there's zero emotional connection to the main characters. The book focuses more on *telling* rather than letting us see and feel what Ezra is going through. The flow and pacing really suffered because of these issues. 

 Also, there are a lot of Jewish phrases that I'm not familiar with, that are included in the book. Some were over-explained, almost repeatedly, while others were sort of left unexplored to the point where I had to guess what they meant. That part of the book lacked consistency. 

 Overall, the story tries too hard to be something it's not – a concept that's never realised, that it had the potential to be, but couldn't quite reach. It spent too much time reminiscing about the past while hinting at what could happen in the future, yet it fails to be present in its own plot. There was a lack of balance, consistency, a plot that couldn't be cohesive or concise, and there was nothing that pulled it all together. 

 If you want a good ghost story, with an MM romance and an MC who sees ghosts, try the YA novel: The Hollow and the Haunted, by Camilla Raines.