This was a different genre of book than what I normally read but I enjoyed it and would recommend it if you are looking for something different than your usual read!

Didn't love this, often felt disconnected and lacked empathy. I found it a difficult read despite the excellent writing Taddeo is clearly capable of. The narrators feel tone deaf, and without the pay-off of the usual 'unlikeable narrator' trope. I just didn't want to finish this book.

I LOVED THIS SO MUCH. I will gobble up anything Lisa writes in an instant, very excited to see what she will come up with next.

Fans of Lisa Taddeo will not be disappointed by her latest, Ghost Lover. This book was bold, important, and completely riveting. Thank you for the ARC!

I found this book hard to connect with . The women in this book are not that nice and hard to relate to and the stories in this book are had to relate to, It is horrible to think that there are women in this story that are out there in real life. That for me is my biggest take from this book

Following up her visceral debut novel Animal with a searing collection of short stories, the bestselling author of Three Women crafts a series of scalpel-sharp vignettes of female desire, grief and obsession.
Not quite able to reach the loft heights of 'Three Women' I am afraid, but still a good read.

I absolutely love this author. I know that I am guaranteed to get a great read and this has been no different.
This is a book I have devoured in one sitting.

I’ve not read any of the author’s previous books but having heard good things was excited to read this collection of short stories. Unfortunately it just wasn’t for me and struggled to connect to any of the unlikeable and dysfunctional women, however having read other reviews I can see that I’m in the minority and overall has been very well received

After reading Animal by Lisa Taddeo and liking it but not loving it, I still felt that there was promise with the author and me. Unfortunately, this didn't work for me. I was very gripped in any of the stories. I don't enjoy some of the language the author uses and how some of her stories make me feel as a lot of them are about women hating other women. This ended up being a bit of a slog to get through.

Whilst I knew that this book was a book of short stories when I first picked it up, I did have high hopes for it
Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed the stories, I felt all of them were too short for me to really become connected with them. I felt like I wanted all of them to be so much longer and more to them
I was left feeling disappointed by this book

I will not be posting my review online as I do not want to put fans of short stories off this book.

I knew nothing about this book before I started reading - I hadn’t seen anybody talk about it, and I hadn’t read the blurb. I only knew it was a collection of short stories.

The main themes that connect these nine stories are the fever of obsession, the blindness of love, and the mania of grief.

I felt so moved by so many parts of these stories. There were so many hard-hitting and emotional observational comments sewn in so casually, that it didn’t feel like I was reading about something heavy and harrowing until that sucker punch line got me right in the feels. There are lots of very sensitive and distressing topics discussed in this book so I definitely recommend looking up trigger warnings if you’re concerned.

I felt completely gripped by Taddeo’s writing - each story had a similar style but also had distinguishing qualities too. I particularly enjoyed the titular story, Ghost Lover, which was told in the second person. I don’t usually enjoy second person narratives as much, but this was written so cleverly and seamlessly that I felt completely taken in by the story and couldn’t put it down.

The stories in this book reminded me in places of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, another short story collection that focuses a lot on love and it’s different forms. I found the writing to be just as excellent in both too, so if you’ve read one, I absolutely recommend the other!

Taddeo definitely is someone who knows how to write and to provoke discussion and this collection has certainly got people talking. I'm a big fan of her work yet I can see how it isn't for everyone and you have to go in with a very open mind. .

I did enjoy this collection HOWEVER i feel it is one that is best read not in one sitting. The stories centre around women who have been ignored, women with obsessions, grieving women, invisible women , ghost women......It is all a bit bleak and can leave you feeling slightly drained and exhausted but it is in true Taddeo form which i love.

If you are a fan of her work you will love this, If you are new to her work then maybe go for Animal first . I will devour anything she writes but she's definitely one you should not dive into if you are feeling somewhat depressed......

This took me some time to get into it but once I was there I was hooked. I really enjoyed this book.

I absolutely head over heels loved Animal so I jumped at the chance to read Ghost Lover. Unfortunately, while I still adored Lisa Taddeo's prose and writing style I just couldn't connect with any of these short stories and it just didn't do anything for me. Without a doubt she is an outstanding artist who has the innate ability of weaving some gritty and raw narratives, I just wish for Ghost Lover she moved away from the rich privileged white female.

9 individual stories told in Taddeo's sharp, unrelenting and gritty style, evocative but just not gripping.

TWs for rape, statutory rape, suicidal ideation, miscarriage, stillbirth, body image issues,

This is now the third book that I've read by Lisa Taddeo and her latest endeavour just doesn't live up to my favourite of the three, Three Women.
The writing is brilliant, as ever but sadly the content of this collection of short stories fell pretty flat for me.
Quite a few of the stories are rather problematic as well and there's a lot of women hating women, which seems almost like the opposite of what you would expect.
It's also quite tough to engage with some of the characters in them too.
Some stories were more of a hit for me than others but overall, I just wasn't blown away by any of them.
Lisa Taddeo is definitely an impressive writer but this didn't showcase her talent like it could have.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked Taddeo's 'Three Women' but I was conflicted about this short story collection.

In this book we have:

- Horrible rich people
- Ennui
- Minimalist punctuation that makes the dialogue difficult to follow
- Misogyny? Definitely fatphobia.

And yet I found it compelling all the same and read the whole thing in one sitting so I'm struggling to say whether I liked it or not.

Ghost Lover is a collection of 9 short stories; all of the stories centre on love and depict grief, obsession and loss, Although I don't normally love short stories I felt that these would be a great way to read more of Lisa's work. I was not disappointed; although I didn't love all of the stories they all conveyed the raw, flawed and complicated feelings.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review

Such a refreshing piece of work from the author, I really liked that it’s a collection of short stories. Really easy to dip in and out of or enjoy in a whole sitting. Liked how all stories linked to grief and loss, but explored other themes other than sadness

I don't think anyone can deny that Taddeo is an incredibly skilled writer and hers is a writing style that, for me, lends itself really well to short stories, of which Ghost Lovers is comprised of (9 in total). That being said, the stories are, once again, about upper middle class white women who are inherently unlikeable. Each woman suffers through something dark - body image issues, obsessive thoughts, low self worth, suicidal ideation (major TW for this) - but, rather than feeling compassion for them, they are presented in a way that encourages derision. I thought the eponymous first story was the best of the bunch and, truly, I might have read a longer novel about the women behind this dating app that crafts perfect replies to the people you are attracted to but, otherwise, I just didn't enjoy or connect with the stories themselves.

Although I liked the concept of Taddeo’s ‘Ghost Lover’, the execution just didn’t sit right with me. The writing was incredible, the content was really sub-par. Unfortunately, it followed the same trend as ‘Three Women’, telling the stories of upper-middle class, straight, white women, the strife they face during intimate relationships and struggles with body image (to the extent where some parts of the book titre on the edge of fatphobia), claiming to be representative of the whole female population. If these are autobiographical stories, I wish it could be stated for context, otherwise the perspective is just unrealistic.

This book seems to be marketed as ‘feminist’, however in my opinion it mostly just consists of women putting other women down, which is neither feminist nor sexist. The characters in each short story all seem to share one personality, defined by being shallow and self-conscious, pretty much the only perspective we receive in the book. Just because something is written by a woman, or from the point of view of a woman, does not mean it is a work of feminist writing, something I learnt after reading this. I didn’t find this book empowering at all.

Nevertheless, Taddeo’s writing is some of the best I’ve ever read. The prose alone is the book’s only redeeming quality, sometimes outshining the plot and the only reason I didn’t ‘DNF’ the collection. I really hope Taddeo diversifies her characters in the future as I’d be interested in diving back into more of her work, she clearly has the potential to write a genuinely great book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for providing me with an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.