Book Review of A Gift of Ghosts by Sarah Wynde

Goodreads Summary: Akira Malone believes in the scientific method, evolution, and Einstein's theory of relativity. And ghosts.

All the logic and reason in the world can't protect her from the truth she can see and communicate with spirits. But Akira is sure that her ability is just a genetic quirk and the ghosts she encounters simply leftover electromagnetic energy. Dangerous electromagnetic energy.

Zane Latimer believes in telepathy, precognition, auras, and that playing Halo with your employees is an excellent management technique. He also thinks that maybe, just maybe, Akira can help his family get in touch with their lost loved ones.

But will Akira ever be able to face her fears and accept her gift? Or will Zane's relatives be trapped between life and death forever?
Goodreads Rating: 3.84 with over 600 ratings
Genre Listing: Fantasy, Paranormal, Ghosts, Romance
Get the Book: Amazon, Book Depository

Review:

Edited 12/1/2016

This supernatural book has been sitting on my kindle for some time now. It's one of the copious free e-books I find and download, and tell myself that I'll eventually get to them. I have an addiction to free e-books. Sometimes their hits sometimes they're not. A Gift of Ghosts by Sarah Wynde was not a hit for me.

At the start of the book, I was reminded of the show Haven (which is based on some Stephen King stuff that I haven't read). Girl gets lured into a strange town, has an unusual ability, but that's totally okay because everyone else in the town is odd too. I liked the initial ghosts too. I thought they were charming, especially Rose and Henry.

I think there was a loose reference to Alice and Wonderland with a quote about 'six impossible things,' which I appreciated. There was also a quote  on page 123 that I liked, which said: "Once you've accepted the impossible, questioning the improbable is only sensible."  The Ghosts and these quotes are about where I draw the line at liking this.

I have a lot of issues with this book. I never really feel like Akira grows in the story. I don't think there's a whole lot of depth to her, Zane, or the rest of his family. The ghosts have way more depth and character building than anything else. Akira has all of these secrets, and they get released at the end of the book, but even when getting to those secrets, I don't feel like she gained much depth. Also, she claims there's so much she doesn't know about ghosts. I'm fine with characters not knowing things, but too much not knowing makes it seem like the author just didn't want to write it into the story.

Then we get to the love story. What? No seriously what? I get that there's a lot of tension between the two, but one or two flirty texts, and then you're having office sex? How is science talk even remotely sexy? In addition to that, we find out that Zane's house is haunted by his mother. Cool another ghost, but she's angry. So instead of that, we get a chapter that spans over months of time. No ghost stuff, just a couple of sentences about Akira and Zane did stuff. It felt like the rest of the book was just being phoned in at that point. "House is haunted; mom's pissed.... Akira and Zane went Kayaking!"

I'm not even going to touch the part of the story where Ghost-Mom possesses Akira, kills her, and then brings her back to life so they can all have Thanksgiving dinner together. What?

I want to give this book a rating of one, but I like the ghosts a lot, so it gets a 2.