Let's Bust a Recap : Ghosted

Reading Ghosted this year seems like a serendipitous work of kismet. I randomly plucked this cutie hot pink spine sporting that iconic little Penguin off the shelf at The Book Shelter this past spring while I was browsing the aisles on a quick trip down to Florida. I'd never even heard of it, but after reading the vague blurb on the back cover and then spotting the plug from Liane Moriarty on the front cover, I was hooked. This book was definitely coming home with me.

A couple months later, the book club and I were browsing the local Friends of the Library on another quick trip I had taken down to Florida, and Sydney ended up buying a copy of Ghosted, partly because she's fascinated by the concept of ghosting and she's admittedly a ghoster herself, and partly because I promised that I'd choose it for book club since it was my turn to pick next. 

Choose it I did, and ended up reading it on my next weekend trip down to Florida in August. (I know, am I ever even in North Carolina? According to this blog post, you'd think not.)

In this 2018 novel by Rosie Walsh, Sarah has fallen head-over-heels in love with Eddie and after a perfect seven days together, he disappears off the face of the earth. Eddie won't return her calls, texts, facebook messages, smoke signals—she literally leaves no stone unturned in trying to contact him. Despite her closest friends trying to convince her that this is a normal occurrence on the dating scene, Sarah is convinced that something terrible is behind this ghosting, and she turns herself inside out trying to figure it out. 

The novel begins after Sarah and Eddie's separation and is interspersed with flashbacks to their perfect week together, along with mysterious letters alluding to a devastating accident nineteen years prior involving Sarah's younger sister Hannah. It's compelling reading and Walsh did a masterful job of composing an absorbing page-turner. I audibly gasped at the shocking twist in the book. Did not see it coming.

Ghosted was a super fun book to read, and a great one to discuss with the book club, but for all that: the ending made me grumpy. I haven't exactly been able to pinpoint why, but at the end of the book I just felt crabby. Perhaps a contributing factor is that Ghosted is at least the fourth book I've read this year that had a side character dealing with infertility. I think I'm a little burnt out on that front in my fiction and the timing of my reading Ghosted just wasn't great. 

But ultimately, it's an entertaining, twisty, unputdownable novel, and if you're looking for something quick to bust you out of a reading slump, this might be just the ticket. 

What's your top recommendation for a slump-busting book?