Anyone's Ghost had me engrossed within the first few pages through August Thompson's witty writing and short chapters that made it difficult to put down.

The novel follows the character Davey "Theron" from the age of 15 to 28 and his journey of obsessive young love with his once older and cooler co-worker Jake. Their relationship cuts off when Theron moves to New York for college but after an out of the blue email from Jake they are reunited, sparking a fiery romance fuelled by drugs and the invincible rush of youth.

This novel tackles mental health, drugs and the rawness of growing up queer in modern America that leaves you on the edge of your seat.

Although the ending is fast-paced, you will still be left crying and wanting to read more. I definitely recommend this book for the perfect summer read.

I'll admit, I requested this mainly because the title references a song by The National... But I was pleasantly surprised by what I read. I was hooked - the prose was sensual, intense and nostalgic. An excellent evocation of teenage infatuation and heartache. A powerful exploration of loss.

Having gone in not knowing much about it, I really enjoyed this novel, which in three parts tells the story of the very intense but also very intermittent relationship between Theron and Jake, a slightly older boy he meets during a teenage summer working in a hardware store. I loved the teenage sections the most, which felt fully inhabited, but it’s a gripping and enjoyable read throughout. Recommended and thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

"This will always be the summer I met Theron."

Theron David Alden is a lonely fifteen year old, who is forced to spend his summer with his father and to take on a summer job where he meets Jake. Older, cooler and fearless. Instantly the summer is saved and full of hanging out, smoking weed, listening to music. Theron isn't sure if he is in love with Jake or just wants to be him, be his friend, his brother. This is the story about a summer that creates a bond till death does them part.
I cannot even point to what exactly it was that had me enthralled, but Anyone's Ghost had me reading till way after midnight. It reminded me of the types of books that I used to love as a young adult. Lovely prose, some nice quotes, not too pretentious. Rollercoaster of emotions even with knowing how the story will end from the first page. I have to admit that the second half and all the drug abuse was less interesting to me but still this was unputdownable.

Thoughts: This is very much a coming-of-age story at heart, navigating the highs and lows of transitioning into adulthood, self-discovery and how relationships change along the way. The prose in this book was beautiful, poignant in parts and deeply nostalgic.
There are many descriptions of alcohol consumption and drug use so keep that in mind if you are thinking of picking this one up. I found the story to be an unflinching, tender and raw exploration of loneliness, love and loss.

i think i had chills down my spine throughout when i was reading this. this gave me shivers. i hate and love this book for how much it made me feel, cause it made me put it down and cry several times. this is toxic. this is beautiful. this is life.

An absolutely beautiful and hear-breaking coming of age story.
I wasn’t expecting to be completely sucked into Theron’s world.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Picador books for my copy - 2/5

A coming of age story exploring a teenage friendship that haunts through the years.

Theron and Jake are children of divorce who meet during a summer in New Hampshire and fall into a fast friendship based on music, drugs and shooting the breeze. Theron falls fast in love with Jake, an older somewhat enigmatic character who is withholding and charismatic. It’s unclear whether Jake feels the same but their bond is real, until a near fatal car wreck and the rhythms of teenage life separate the boys. Theron makes his way in New York, where he has an on-off relationship with beautiful, rich, equally damaged Lou, and explores his same sex attraction in a loveless way laced with internalised homophobia. Then Jake contacts Theron and they meet and spend a blissful, yet still unsure and destructive few days together until Jake again leaves for his wife and his life in Texas, but not before another car crash. The book ultimately comes to a tragic end, with yet another car crash, but it does end on a note of hope and a sense that Theron is ready to let go.

This book had some lovely passages where the longing and insecurity of Theron was crystal clear, but Jake was something of a cipher throughout. The book was very slow and the doomed relationship has been done much better before. The language was over wrought at times and the car crash device was not as well employed as it thought it was.

I wouldn’t recommend this one.

Wow ghost really made me sob - this story felt so realistic. The friends to lovers vibe didn’t feel forced and it was refreshing to see both of them navigate their feelings for each other together. This book we definitely be a hit and I’m sure people will go through a rollercoaster of emotions as I most certainly did!!

I loved this book with my whole heart. I knew I was going. To enjoy it from the synopsis. Will keep an eye on the author!!

This was a tender and gut-wrenching exploration of queer love, teenage crushes and idolisation— A debut coming-of-age love story that you need to get on your summer TBR.
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I felt so connected to the main two characters in this book, everytime I put it down I'd be constantly thinking about them and a day after finishing it I still can't get them out of my head. This was such a bittersweet story from start to finish; we're led into the book with the knowledge that one of them dies which makes for a heartbreaking story that reads like a flashback over the course of two decades and allows us to get wholly attached to both Jake and Theron/David. Knowing what we know doesn't make the eventual tragic event any less upsetting, instead I thought it heightened it and I was left reading the last few pages nearly sobbing into my pillow. It felt such a clever way of writing a novel like this and made it seem so different to any other type of love story.
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Thompson's writing was so addictive and had me thoroughly gripped right from the first page, the way he sets each scene and the care and time he's put into the characters and the story as a whole is plain to see. I can't believe this is a debut, I'm already itching for more from August, even if it means having my heart shattered again and again!
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The only very slight criticism I had was the last part of the book, as we got to present day, felt a little rushed compared to the pace of the rest of the book. But with saying this, I thought the ending was appropriate and didn't leave me feeling unsatisfied (albeit completely heartbroken!).
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Showing what it means to love someone while also wanting to be them as well as the complexities of battling with your sexuality and masculinity, Anyone's Ghost is the modern love story that is bound to be a popular read this summer.

Thank you Netgalley, Picador, Pan Macmillan for the free eARC!

I was highly anticipating this debut from August Thompson, and although it has its moments of greatness, it failed to sweep me off my feet.

I am a sucker for this kind of novel, that explores these star-crossed yet doomed relationships. Not unrequited love, but an exploration of great loves you’re forced to leave behind. It’s prominent in one of my favourite novels, Call Me By Your Name, and in Past Lives, a recently re-watched film.

At times, particularly at the 70% mark and onwards, Anyone’s Ghost did become reminiscent of those stories for me, but I felt there was a lack of real depth to the characters that kept me distanced from their story.

Before this point, the slow pacing forced the narrative to become stagnant, and I wasn’t able to root for the characters, nor truly understand their desires.

I wouldn’t discourage people from picking this up, but I feel other novels explore the same relationship dynamics better.

This is a debut novel from American author August Thompson that feels as though is spans a lifetime though in reality the scope of the novel is much shorter - it’s a story of youth and sexual awakenings told through Theron/Davey after he’s sent to spend the summer in New Hampshire with his father and first meets the cooler, enigmatic Jake.

Anyone’s Ghost was a slow burn for me and I didn’t expect to like it as much as I came to. It’s very similar in tone to Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead as the narrative perspective ages with Davey as he shifts from being a scrawny, insecure 15 year old and grows into Theron a Brooklynite confident in his sexuality though still captured by the uncertainty and push-pull of his relationship with Jake.

I think my issues with the novel were that it feels very New-York-Writing-School in a way that I often struggle to connect with - it’s a novel of identities. But Theron’s sexuality is beautifully unfurled from the questioning nature of adolescence into the explorations and negotiations of your early twenties and committed relationships. Thompson manages to capture the contemporary in creating characters whose love stories overlap and intertwine one another without villanising or sidelining one romance in favour of another. However, there’s so much focus on the effects of drug-taking that the novel can drag - particularly in the New Hampshire section - that feels filled with a lot of faux-revelations about the beauty of the world and touches upon narrative overindulgence.

Wow! I really thought this book was going to be something else. I did find the first hundred pages started to drag but I'm glad that I stuck it out because by the end I was truly in love with this book. And I think everyone should give it a read. it is gorgeous.

Anyone's Ghost is a love story about destruction and the people who change your life. Theron David Alden is fifteen and spending the summer with his dad in New Hampshire when he meets Jake, who is older but likes the same things—bands, drugs—as him. They return to their separate lives, but over the next two decades, Theron is haunted by his love for Jake and how much he's always hoped for Jake to want him too.

This is a novel about character and relationships rather than plot, a fact that's made clear by the opening basically giving you the key turning points in the narrative at the start: three car crashes. That out of the way, there's space to focus on Theron, and Jake, and a few others around them, and the impact of love and depression and a desire for oblivion, but also a hope of something. The first part of the book centres around Theron's coming of age story, trying to avoid his own queerness and rationalise how he feels about Jake whilst they spend all of their time drinking and doing drugs, and then the second part moves to a twentysomething Theron, not long out of college and in New York looking for something, when that something becomes Jake suddenly visiting. This becomes a bittersweet story of growing up and still hoping to get what you've dreamed of.

The other main relationship for Theron in the book, with Lou, isn't mentioned in the blurb, but is also central to the book, as they explore open relationships and what feelings you might burden a partner with, seeming in contrast in some ways to Jake's relationship throughout the book with Jess, who as readers from Theron's perspective, we know little about. There is a richness of queer relationships and ways of navigating the world, even when they are, as they are often in the book, melancholy ones and messy ones.

The third part brings the book to nearly the present day, and the tragedy already set up in the opening, by way of a speed through Theron's life for a while. This part does feel a lot more rushed than the rest of the book, but does have a nice ending scene between two characters that feels like it rounds off the story well, whilst continuing the sense of 'haunting' pervading the whole thing.

Anyone's Ghost is a bittersweet queer love story and an exploration of oblivion. I found the middle part in particular hard to put down, with its memorable image of New York City in a storm and two characters trying to find who they might be together, even briefly.

3.0 stars.

Thank you to Macmillian and Netgalley for providing me with this eARC in exchange for honest review.

Fifteen-year-old, Theron, is wholly transfixed when he meets the older, bad boy Jake. They like the same bands, the same drugs, the same kinds of accidents and the same drive for oblivion. They spend two decades getting high, drifting apart, being brought back together by the fates, until the same ones tear them apart forever.

Does Theron want Jake, or does he want to be Jake? But does Jake actually want intimacy with Theron, or will he take whatever he can?

It starts off with the immediate news that Jake is dead, learning he survived two of the three crashes, but the last ultimately lead to his death. The news of his death doesn't truly affect the reader until going through the rocky relationship, reading excerpts of their lives together (Theron POV). It was a good attention grabber to dive into the novel, but I often wonder if I would have been more attached if they just kept the news until the end. Combined with reading about their drug use, together and separately, over and over and over again, I just kept waiting to hear of the accidents which took me in-and-out of caring about these main characters. I just felt like something was missing, but I still enjoyed this read. The themes of the book are grief and depression, which always ropes me into a book. So, I was intrigued on this journey to see how each character handles it, their thoughts and actions, and mostly, all of the whys. I'll probably visit this book in the future for another read, maybe a physical copy will help to enhance my reading experience.

From the start of August Thompson’s debut we know that there will be three car crashes involving two men, the last of which is fatal for one of them. Fifteen-year-old Theron is smitten, with the manager of the hardware shop where he’ll be working the summer, eager to impress Jake and terrified both of embarrassing himself and discovering a sexuality he’s busy trying to smother. They bond over a mutual love of thrash metal, recklessness and self-destruction. Six years later, Theron is living in Brooklyn, still hankering after Jake who texts him suggesting they meet after years of silence, arriving in the middle of a hurricane which confines them to Theron’s apartment for four days, Theron’s fantasy of a life together scotched by Jake’s wedding ring. The invitation to Jake’s memorial seven years later shocks but doesn’t surprise Theron.
In an intensely introspective narrative, Theron tells us his story in flashbacks. The excruciating self-consciousness of adolescence is captured painfully well contrasting with Jake’s apparent coolness until it becomes clear that they're both grappling with a depression which threatens to destroy them both. A heart-wrenching novel, although over long for me.

This is a poignant book that might touch your heart deeply. It's a love story that begins with a lonely 15-year-old boy whose life takes a turn when he meets another boy. The narrative explores the journey of growing up, the friendships we form, and the heartbreaks that life brings.

I honestly don't know where to start with this novel. A genuinely beautiful, heartbreaking, life affirming novel full of angst, debauchery, drugs, love, sex and confusion.

It's an interesting start to the novel when we learn that Jake is dead, having survived two car crashes which David (or Theron to Jake) was present for only to succumb to a third. Right away, we are hit with a punch. In most novels where there is a death of a main character, this would come towards to latter part of the story when the reader has developed a connection and feelings for the character. That tends to hit hard. Here, where we know nothing of Jake in the first few pages, the death can't possibly hit as hard.

Furthermore, it also takes away that element of unknowing, of the reader asking themselves whether they will have a happy ending.

However, Thompson really makes this work and I am not sure I can quite explain why.

We first meet David and Jake as a 15 year old and 17 year old respectively when they both work in the same dead end job, both seeking a connection and coming from a background of divorced parents and a troubled relationship with them.

The friendship between them is instant, they love the same music, same interests (and the same drugs) and it is clear that David's feelings may go a little deeper at this point.

The novel then progresses as David and Jake grow older, they grow closer and then apart and then together but the bond between them, whilst indefinable, is always there in various guises.

Although we know from page 1, or indeed the synopsis, where the story ends, Thompson's writing in getting us there is nothing short of majestic. The writing is so assured for a debut novel that I couldn't quite believe it was one. There is nothing overly pretentious or flamboyant about the style of writing but Thompson just writes in a way that makes such a connection with the reader. Simple, yet deep, funny but not hilarious. He has such a relatable way of delving into relationships you will see yourself or someone on every page.

Honestly, I can't rave about this book enough and wish it all the success it deserves. Thanks to the author, Netgalley and Pan Macmillan, Picador for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

Can definitely see the value in this. For many teens, especially those who are troubled, drink and drugs are their method of escape. It was just too much for me and I got a bit fed up with it.

Could feel for the characters and their longings, troubles and confusion. But, also just found this book really frustrating and bleak for the most part.