
Member Reviews

Thought provoking, funny, poignant, dark, light, sharp, quick, enticing - my thanks to Penguin/Fig Tree for the reading copy.

I adored this book so much.
This book was so real, yet so uplifting - fantastic and the perfect escape from life- buy this book!!!

A enjoyable book, and I really liked each of the characters, apart from Max! I felt like he had let me down personally, and was quite disappointed by the ending of this book.

I think it's an highly entertaining and poignant novel,, very well written and engaging.
Nina is a sad and funny character, an interesting and fleshed out character I loved.
This book is complex and I loved how the author deals with friendship, grief, dementia.
It's an excellent debut and I hope to read another book by this author soon.
It's highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

An enjoyable read! The book starts off with an amusing character observing pretty much everything, anything, and everyone around her, which is a reminder of the number of things that we bypass every single day and don't pay attention to. She is truly gifted for observation. At the start of the book, you'll think that the character has got a perfect life but as the book goes on, she shows off her lonely side. So now to the good, bad and the ugly...
Good: the book describes the life of a young girl trying to find love whilst all her friends are in a relationship; par one. The book explains how hard it is to find love and how easy it is to lose it and the different stages of feelings that people go through once the love is no longer there.
Bad: the main character is supposed to be a cookbook writer... however, there's hardly anything in the book about food. She hardly cooks and there's not much (or hardly any) content about her column(s) in the magazines or the people that she's interviewed.
Ugly: what happened to the characters at the end? I found the situation between her and Angelo super weird... from total enemies to a random one-night stand and friendship?
Overall, I did enjoy the book but would have expected slightly a bit more at the end.

I really enjoyed this book. It was different from what I would normally read but I loved the storyline. It was sad in parts and one scene seemed a little unbelievable but I loved most of this book. I hope Dolly writes another novel!

This was a great book, hard to believe it's the author's debut novel. Cracking writing and storyline, the book made me laugh and cry as it laid bare the pain of finding love in the era of online dating and the changing face of friendships as you get older. It also dealt compassionately with tough subject matter like dementia and difficulties of family relationships.
Grab a sauvignon blanc and settle in for a few evenings of meaningful entertainment

I enjoyed this book although I found it slow at the start. I liked the main character and the story was believable

Nina Dean, a thirtysomething successful author, is ready to start dating again - and she meets a man who seems to be perfect for her. If this seems like a book you would not like to pick up, stop right there, because it is much more than that. Dolly Alderton writes not only about love, relationships and loneliness but also about losing your loved one. Nina's father is suffering from dementia, and throughout the book Nina is trying to reconcile her memories of her funny, smart father with the confused man he's become. These were the fragments that I found the most interesting and moving. Whereas my personal experiences (and choices) would be different to the ones of the main character, I am sure many readers could relate to them. There is a lot of laughter and sadness in this book, as Nina deals with the lack of closure in a painful end to her relationship, loneliness and family problems - I did not expect that and it really made me like the book more.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC.
I loved this book! It was so beautifully written and incredibly relatable.
I just loved Nina and her friend Lola and it took me no time at all to get sucked in and desparate to find out how Nina would navigate through her life.
It's the kind of book that makes you decide to have a bath over a shower, just so you can keep reading!
Will definitely be gifting this to some people for christmas.

Loved this! At its heart a really modern take on the quest for love and the perils of dating apps, the novel delves beyond romantic relationships and looks at bonds between a child (now grown up) and their parents, and friendships between women. As the only one of my school friendship group not in a relationship, while the rest move away from our city, move in with partners etc, I found I could relate quite a bit to Nina's plight. At times sad and painfully relatable but there's a lot of humour throughout. I really enjoyed it.

I could not resist the description of this book: thirty-two year old Nina Dean is a cookery writer who finds herself ghosted by her boyfriend of three months, a seemingly perfect man, who has just told her he loves her for the first time. Then I found out the goddess, Nigella Lawson apparently loved this novel and that sealed the deal. Dolly obvs has legions of fans (when I programmed an event with her during my days at @waterstonesgowerstreet tickets went almost instantly, the fastest selling event in my entire career of event management) and reading this novel, it's not hard to see why. It taps into some very specific truths about heteronormative relationships, the way gender politics play out on the dating scene and the codes of behaviour women are expected to adhere to in order to be deemed 'attractive'. I've found myself highlighting so many lines; eg. 'Why was a sprinkling of the patriarchy so good when it came to dating? I resented it. It was like good sea salt – just a tiny dash could really bring out the flavour of the date and it was so often delectable.' ,(wincingly true in my case 😬) GHOSTS has elegance, heart and humour - it's been a treat to read, scrolling through on my Kindle app ferociously as I put my son to bed each night.

Readers of Dolly Alderton's first book "Everything I Know About Love" will really enjoy this book. All those things that I nodded my head to in that book are further explored in her first novel. It's really relatable and I found that I really related to the main character Nina. Admittedly, there were things that she said and did that made me eye roll slightly, but on the whole, she felt really familiar. One of the primary focuses of the novel is the ghosting trend that has appeared thanks to the growing popularity of dating apps. I've been ghosted personally in the past and the way that it affected Nina and how she dealt with it really resonated with me. I saw myself a lot in that part. As well as this, it explores familial relationships, particularly with a parent whose memory is fading, which must be really difficult. Nina had a lot to deal with, on top of balancing her friendships, when her friends were all at different stages in life. So tricky for her to navigate.
I found this a little slow to get into, but once I got passed the first 50 or so pages, I was hooked and flew through it in a weekend. I'd really recommend.

A true to life, fabulous debut novel!!
It was so easy to get lost in this book. I was laughing out loud one minute, then feeling heartbroken the next. The story is so relatable and has some wonderful characters and some I'd like to have punched 😂
If you're looking for a book that uplifts you and makes you feel proud to be a strong female...this is for you. It made me feel happy I have my true love ♥️

Ghosts is Dolly Alderton’s first novel, following the wild success of her book Everything I Know About Love. Nina George Dean has never dated. After her first long term relationship broke down, she took a break from romance to concentrate on her career. She’s a successful food writer, her 2nd book is about to be released and she’s bought her first flat. So when she turns 32 she decides it’s time to dating and joins Linx, a dating app.
I enjoyed this book, I devoured it in one day! I liked Nina, I wasn’t sure if I would connect to her but I found her easy to relate to. Ghosts is a great title for the book, as not only is there the ghosting storyline, but with Nina’s Dad’s dementia, we see him fading and hold onto the ghosts of his past. Nina is also struggling with her friendship circle, specifically with how they fit into each other’s lives, something that happens naturally when we get older and start to settle down. I really liked Dolly’s depiction of friendships, especially with Lola. Dolly’s way with words and observations were so spot on, from the poignant (‘I had never known a feeling as unbearable- as sour, wrenching and unshakeably sad- as pity for a parent’) to the beautiful (‘we walked further north, on winding paths and through woodlands scattered with sunset slices through gaps of branches’) and the funny (hen party) to the infuriating (how the men behave in this). This book was just what I needed to read right now. A heartfelt, humorous debut novel

I loved this book! Sharp, well-written, witty and insightful, as you'd expect from the Queen of Podcasts. Very thoughtful about modern relationships and one of my favourite contemporary fiction reads during lockdown.

Ghosts is a very funny, relatable and entertaining read from journalist, author and – as I ‘know’ her best – co-host of the fab podcast The High Low: Dolly Alderton.
This book is fiction but you can hear Dolly’s voice strongly in so much of the story. The main character, Nina, is a likeable and strong female character who I immediately warmed to. She’s independent and fun, and I really identified with her, especially as she’s a similar age to me, living in London.
The title of Ghosts gives away part of the story, in that we can guess what will happen in part of the story, but this theme can actually be applied to lots of different relationships like Nina’s friends and family too. Her father's battle with dementia is also really interesting; I used to work for Dementia UK who provide Admiral Nurses so it was great that Nina's family got the support of one. I hope this will help highlight how brilliant they are.
I loved reading about her memories of Mile End – which is close to where I currently live – and her relationships with school friends (and the fact we might not have picked our close friends if we’d met them today, not at school).
The ending to Ghosts was, I felt, just right and Dolly skilfully avoided it being too cliched or cheesy.
This is a fun, entertaining read and I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for an intelligent and observant read with a strong female lead.

This story is about a thirty-something woman who is “looking for love”. There are moments where the observations about life are very relatable but it is full of cliches & stereotypes and as such, I didn’t really warm to the characters or the storyline.
I felt that the ending was lacking – it just fizzled out without a definite conclusion
Overall, I am sure it will appeal to the late-twenties/early-thirties market who are immersed in the world of internet/app dating, but for me it was just too superficial, too formulaic & too similar to other stories …
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book free from the publisher via NetGalley. Whilst thanks go to the publisher for the opportunity to read it, all opinions are my own.
#NetGalley

Thank you to Penguin and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Ghosts is an entertaining and nuanced exploration of modern love, friendships and family. Alderton's eagerly-awaited first novel follows Nina Dean, a woman in her thirties who decides it's time to try out online dating, in the form of a Tinder-esque dating app called Linx. The story unfolds over the course of a year, which Nina describes as the 'strangest of her life'. Written in Alderton's modern and relatable style, the reader is quickly drawn into Nina's world. After a whirlwind romance with the beguiling Max, Nina finds that she has been 'ghosted' - Max has unmatched her, refuses to answer her messages, and is nowhere to be found. Alderton writes romance beautifully and succeeds in creating a convincing portrayal of their relationship, so that the reader is almost as surprised as Nina at Max's sudden disappearance.
Aside from the romance, the most interesting part of the novel is Alderton's portrayal of Nina's relationship with her parents, particularly her dad who is battling dementia. I thought Ghosts explored dementia in a thought-provoking way, not sugarcoating the illness but still showing the moments of light and happiness alongside the struggles.
As well as the emotional depiction of her dad's deteriorating health, there are also laugh-out-loud moments scattered through Ghosts. A particular highlight for me was Nina and Lola attending the hen-do from hell.
Ghosts is an impressive novel written in Alderton's signature style, which I'm sure many women in their twenties and thirties will find relatable.

Thank you to Netgalley for my arc of this book!
I have never read a Dolly Alderton book and as a 'Judge a book by its cover' person, it was the beautiful cover that made me want to read this book!
And I can honestly say I LOVED it!
From the first pages I completely fell in love with Nina! Her friendships with both Lola and Katherine are totally different but both totally needed to help her understand other people's lives and her own experiences.
Reading this has totally put me off ever having to do online dating and luckily I'm not in a position where I have to, lucky for me!
It made me laugh and also made me want to cry, it's a story of what happens in peoples lives but I just loved Nina and her life!
One of my favourite reads and would definitely recommend it for a feel good, emotional read!