Instant New York Times bestseller!“I absolutely loved this book and didn’t want it to end.” –Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies“This is an ‘accidentally stayed up until 4 a.m. because it’s impossible to put down’ kind of novel.” –USA TodaySeven perfect days. Then he disappeared. A love story with a secret at its heart.When Sarah meets Eddie, they connect … 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.
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I absolutely loved this book and didn’t want it to end.
Gorgeous. Walsh has created such strong characters, and so much warmth. The way she writes about love and longing is just beautiful.
I love this book with my whole heart. It’s about love and loss, joy and grief, regret and hope. What an extraordinary debut, masterfully told—one that you will read in one sitting. As a writer I am in awe of how skillfully the story unfolded, and as a reader I’m already missing these wonderful characters.
Warning: This review contains spoilers.
I had high hopes for Ghosted, but unfortunately, it didn’t meet my expectations. The title and blurb are pretty misleading: only the first third of this book are actually about Sarah being “ghosted,” and the other two-thirds are basically about Sarah and Eddie pining for each other but at the same time hating each other and themselves and their families and their lives. Ugh.
I also found the story hard to get into, probably because I didn’t care much about the characters (except for Rudi, who was awesome). I didn’t find Sarah and Eddie’s romance very believable, simply because Walsh didn’t really give us much to go with – just a few vignettes of their time together scattered amongst Sarah’s ghosting-induced stalking and neurosis. Because of that, I just didn’t really care if Eddie ever called Sarah again. I also didn’t really get why Eddie/his mother/Hannah hated Sarah so much. Yes it was tragic what happened to Alex, but it’s not like Sarah did it on purpose or really had much of a choice in what happened. Their anger seemed really blown out of proportion and I didn’t have much sympathy for them because of it.
There were also a lot of extraneous plot lines involving characters that Walsh almost twists our arms to care about, but they don’t add much to the plot line and we don’t really see much of them again: Reuben and Kaia and the Clowndoctor charity, Tommy and Jo’s “shocking” affair, Jenni’s struggle with IVF, etc.
Finally, the “blindside” twists started to get to be a bit much. Once would’ve been enjoyable, but it just seemed like Walsh kept trying to do it all over the place and after a while it started to lose it’s thrill and instead just became “oh, this again.”
Walsh’s writing was well done and she had some good ideas here, but a lot could’ve been trimmed to give the book more impact and to pull the reader in.
A delight. Moving and relatable, with characters you’ll fall in love with. One for your wish list.
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.
This is a story about Sarah and Eddie. They meet one day while Sarah is visiting friends and family in the UK. They fall in love after spending only one 1 week together holed up in Eddie’s cabin. Eddie is leaving to Spain and Sarah is due back to her life in California. They promise to call each other when his travels are done. So she waits but…..
He does not call her or answer her.
What has happened to Eddie? Did something bad happen to him?What till you find out why.
Finished in a day as I couldn’t wait to see what happened – and I didn’t guess what did! Clever and well-written – highly recommended!
I really enjoyed this book. Strong characters. Interesting story line.
Beautifully written! A bit mysterious, so it keeps you guessing and wondering then it all falls into place. I love all the characters! Wonderful book!
Stayed up till 2am to finish it! Loved it.
Has it happened to you. Probably for the usual reasons. No harm no foul. But Sarah is devastated. She has to know why. When she finds out, even more devastation. No worries it does have a happy if somewhat cliche ending. A fun fast read. Just right for those lovely summer days by the pool.
I’ve had this book on my TBR for a while. Recently, it fell into my hands as I was rearranging my bookshelves and hello! Am I glad that happened because I am currently aglow with the best kind of book hangover imaginable.
This story is angsty. Lovely. Haunting. Heartbreaking. Uplifting. It’s everything
To be honest, someone gave me this novel and I really expected to dip into it and toss it aside, feeling smug about all of the “better” books there are out there. But you know what? The writing was so compellingly honest and emotional, and the characters were so darn likeable, that I picked up the book and didn’t put it down until I’d finished. And, yes, I cried. This book is more than it seems.
Ghosted is one of my favorite kind of novels, a story of people who’ve been injured by life in terrible ways, but need to figure out how to move on. I loved the surprises and the kindliness of the storyline, and the tender respect Walsh gave the characters. Excellent escape reading.
DNF at 20%
I got bored and had a really hard time caring about or believing the characters. This wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be. Doubtful, but maybe it gets better? Where I dropped off this novel was not so much the mystery and romance it wanted to be, and was simply the tale of a woman who goes off the deep end over a guy she barely knows. *sigh*
Really enjoyed this book. Loved the characters and the twists were wonderful! Very enjoyable read.
I loved this book and couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Rosie Walsh is another new-to-me author (Hooray! My favorite thing to discover!), and I’ll definitely be searching out her other works.
Hmmmm, now what to say about the story that won’t be a spoiler . . .
Actually, no, I won’t give you any details. I knew nothing at all about the story going into it and that made it super fun. Suffice it to say – if you enjoy any of the following genres (or genre-blends), I think GHOSTED will be your perfect cup of tea: contemporary romance, women’s fiction, psychological suspense . . .
Enjoyable book but a little confusing near the end where they flipped what you were being led to think. Found that switch a bit contrived and made the flow seem erratic.
Beautifully written, romantic, impossible to put down, and with characters you’ll be thinking about months later. I adored this book.
Premise: Woman spends wonderful week with a man while back in her hometown visiting. She thinks she’s in love, but he leaves and doesn’t talk to her for months afterwards. What’s with this dude?
Story/ Plot/Happenings
For me, this story took too long to get started. It has a lot of the trendy things that most books have right now, except they slow down the book instead of make it intriguing. The first person narrative, the (at times) different perspective (POV) narrative, and the alternating timeline–first we’re current, then we go back in time, then current again–are supposed to be there to make the story more immediate and to reveal the story like layers of an onion (mini-revelations). Instead, I get a slow build of knowledge/plot between moments of poetic hysteria. It was pretty frustrating to read until about 1/3 – 1/2 the way through. Then as major plot points get revealed, you feel you’re moving. So, if you’re stuck, let the MC finish relaying what happened with Hannah, (the MC’s sister), in the letter and then, you’ll see some daylight.
However, by the end, everything that I thought would happen/had happened did– so it wasn’t really a surprise or twist kind of reveal. There was one surprise, but even that wasn’t a big surprise, because there was a choice of characters it could have happened to, and it was an easy choice. That sounded complicated, but that’s only because I’m trying not to spoil anything. It’s really not.
Writing and characters
Like I said above, there are moments of poetic hysteria. The writing, especially when the MC is internalizing, remembering, or analyzing a situation is poetic prose–elegant, descriptive, and romantic in word choice. Wonderful.
The hysteria comes in the content of her thoughts. She meets this guy, hangs out with him for a week, falls in love, and is freaking out that he keeps dodging her or has just disappeared. Because we hear 1 side of this “love story” for half the book, the 1 side we hear during that time–the female MC–sounds hysterical. So my problem here is more with character than the writing. As a woman, I may identify with this MC’s want of this guy, but I don’t like to admit it. No way am I going to act strung out and crazy over a guy. The other characters seem relatively flat compared to her, and so I’m not as interested in them, but I do root for happiness for her friends and even her ex-husband.
Overall
This slow-build read was not really my style. But for those who like to go along for a ride while a story plays out, this could be an enjoyable venture for you. The writing is well done, which makes this a tolerable read for me, and once we start to really find out some major plot points, the story does become an interesting page-turner.