I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Ghoster by Jason Arnopp Published by Orbit on October 22 2019
Genres: Adult, Thriller, Horror
Pages: 496
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A fast-paced mystery with plenty of creepy moments, Ghoster gets off to a strong start but ends up a little too WTF for my taste.
This is probably going to be the most disappointing book of the year for me. I absolutely loved The Last Days of Jack Sparks, and I’ve been waiting over three years to see what Arnopp would do as a follow up. Unfortunately, this book was really a mixed bag. Ghoster gets off to a great start, setting up an interesting mystery surrounding a missing person, a cell phone and an empty apartment. Arnopp’s writing style is punchy, and I thought his pacing was great. The story is filled with unreliable characters who refuse to do what’s expected of them, and the author gives us some really good twists that I didn’t see coming. Plus, the first third of the story in particular is really creepy, and I love the way he uses the title as both an allusion to a ghost story and the modern concept of “ghosting” someone. Very clever indeed! So why didn’t it work for me? A few reasons, which I’ll get into, but the main reason is that I did not like the ending at all.
Kate Collins is a paramedic who is about to leave her job in Leeds and move to Brighton to live with her boyfriend, Scott Palmer, who she met only a few months before. After a whirlwind romance of sorts—finding him on Tinder, meeting him unexpectedly at a retreat, a few perfect dates, sexting and then finally doing the deed in person—Kate is packed and ready to go. But a few days before she’s set to leave, she realizes that Scott isn’t answering any of her texts. Neither does he answer the phone when she calls him. Bewildered, worried and just a little pissed off, Kate proceeds with the move anyway, hoping to solve the mystery when she gets to his flat.
But when she arrives, Scott’s flat is completely empty, as if he had never even been there. The only thing she finds, which makes his disappearance even more worrisome, is his cracked but still working cell phone, buried beneath some rubble on the balcony. Determined to discover the truth—did something horrible happen to him, or did he simply get cold feet and leave her hanging?—Kate decides to break into Scott’s phone to find the answers. But what she finds raises even more questions. And why is the apartment giving her the creeps?
The main takeaway from Ghoster is that cell phones are bad. Arnopp has taken the concept that we are so obsessed with our phones and social media that we ignore everything else in our lives and turned it into a horror story. Stephen King tried to do the same thing over a decade ago when he wrote Cell, a story about how cell phones cause the end of the world, and it wasn’t one of his better books, in my opinion. Arnopp puts a more modern twist on his story, but his ultimate message that your phone is going to kill you didn’t quite work for me.
The story is told from Kate’s first person point of view, so we’re in her head for the entire story. Kate isn’t that likable, but I thought Arnopp did a good job of making her interesting. Her life is a mess: she’s given up her smartphone and all social media because of something horrible that happened to her (and we don’t find out what this is for quite a while). Instead, she has an old Nokia flip phone that only texts and makes calls. She’s insecure and has low self esteem when it comes to dating. She wants nothing more than to find a boyfriend, and resorts to Tinder in order to make that happen. She can hardly believe that Scott likes her, let alone wants to live with her, and of course her fears are confirmed as soon as he stops returning her texts. For the most part, I didn’t mind her voice that much, although her inner obsession with making up excuses for Scott’s absence became tedious after a while. Also, Kate makes some horrible choices in this story and I just couldn’t forgive her for those. She keeps sleeping in Scott’s flat even though she’s seeing ghosts. She’s stealing amphetamines from work in order to get through her long shifts on the job. And she can’t let Scott go, even when all the signs tell her to LEAVE IT ALONE ALREADY!
We also get to meet a few side characters, like Kate’s best friend Izzy, who was one of my favorite characters. But there are others who seemed to be in the story simply for convenience’s sake. Scott’s off-putting twin brother Ray makes an appearance, although his role was so strange and his entire story line gave me a queasy feeling, to be honest. But the weirdest character of all was Scott’s mother Maureen who shows up randomly in the beginning of the story and then returns at the end, in a very strange way.
I did love the way Arnopp alternates chapters between the present and the past, which was a great way to show the developing relationship between Kate and Scott while also dropping hints about the weirdness to come. It also adds lots of tension to the story and draws out the mystery until the reader is ready to scream from frustration. The author intersperses some of his chapters with text chats between Kate and Izzy, which added a lot of humor, but also how can you not include texting in a story about a cell phone?
I do think Ghoster would have been more successful as a straight-up thriller without all the odd, supernatural elements, which for me were the weakest parts of the story. And it pains me to say that, because my entire reading life revolves around speculative fiction! In this case, however, the parts where Kate is stalking Scott’s online presence, looking into his browser history, and spying on his Tweets and Facebook posts were more interesting than the confusing bits of ghostly entities and the sinister voices coming out of Scott’s phone.
But the biggest disappointments for me were the final reveals. We know from the get go that something is “off” about Scott. He’s cagey around Kate and you know he’s keeping secrets from her. Even the fact that he asks her to move in with him only a few months after they meet—a fairly big step in a relationship, one would think—doesn’t feel quite right. When Kate finally cracks the code and accesses his private diary app ( aptly named “Trooself”), I was thrilled that we would finally discover his secrets. But to say his “big” secret was a letdown is an understatement. Even worse, the ending of the book was a complete disappointment. After four hundred pages of build-up, hints and cryptic voices coming from Scott’s phone, I really wanted a better payoff, but what I got was a rushed and chaotic ending that left me cold and frankly, saying “What the fuck?” for the hundredth time.
And even with all these negatives, I still had fun with this book. Ghoster was a page-turner that made me hungry for answers, even if it didn’t necessarily deliver in the end. Did it scare me enough to give up my smartphone? Hell no. But will I be anxiously awaiting Jason Arnopp’s next book? You bet.
Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.
I really dislike when books/movies/tv shows have a supernatural element. It just feels like a cope out. It’s almost a pass to have all these creepy elements then never explain them or explain then poorly.
That’s too bad about this one.
I think the title clues you in that there’s going to be a supernatural element, but I ultimately didn’t like the way it ended up.
That’s too bad about the ending. I’ll hopefully be giving it a try soon so we’ll see what my reaction will be.
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
Haha- the message is your phone is going to kill you, but stealing and taking amphetamines is okay? I don’t think I’ve seen a positive review for this yet. I think I’ll pass. Great review Tammy!
Thanks Sarah, I highly recommend The Last Days of Jack Sparks if you want to try him sometime.
Thanks- I’ll add it!
I do hope to read this one soon but thanks to you, I’ll lower my expectations a tad. Sounds like you need to rewrite the ending.
I can’t wait to hear your reaction, Barb. You might like it more than me!
Oh what a shame! I like the premise, but I am impressed that you got to the end. I’m not a fan of protagonists I dislike, so I would have DNF’d this one. Great review – I always like your fair-mindedness when you encounter a disappointing read, Tammy:)
I didn’t have trouble getting to the end, it was VERY readable and quite a page turner. But yeah, a lot of readers can’t stand Kate, so she’s definitely not for everyone!
Ha ha, I find myself nodding in agreement with every single point you make! Although I generally prefer supernatural reads to straight-up thrillers, the supernatural bits here just didn’t work for me, and I was SO annoyed by the reveals at the end, particularly from Scott’s journal. I haven’t read anything else by this author, but it sounds like I should find a copy of his previous books and give it a try!
Oh yeah, Scott’s journal, I couldn’t believe what his story was! It felt like a cop out, and it was really at that point that I thought his reveal would be something supernatural, which would have made the ending more believable, I think.
I’m comforted in finding out that your reaction to this book was similar to mine: intriguing story concept, but not-so-likable main character – and indeed the over-the-top excuses Kate finds for Scott’s strange behavior made me want to slap some sense in her! As for the ending I was not so much disappointed as *tired* for the endless back-and-forth that I had to endure to get there: IMHO it would have worked better as a short story…
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Maddalena@spaceandsorcery recently posted…SALVATION DAY, by Kali Wallace
It was definitely a long road to get to that ending!
This has such a great cover and blurb. I’m sorry the final reveals let you down.
Laura Thomas recently posted…Little Hearts by Breanna Hayse ~ Spotlight and Giveaway
Yeah me too! But at least I had fun, even though things didn’t end the way I wanted them to.
Sorry you didn’t like it as much as you wanted to. Love the review
Thanks Mir!
Sorry the ending of this book was such a disappointment for you, that’s never fun. Especially when you’ve been waiting so long for it!
I know! But I still had fun:-)
I rated this the same! Though I think I liked the ending a bit more than you, lol! Though I agree it was a bit bizarre, but I think I had a harder time with Kate. God, she was a MORON! My review is going up tomorrow.
Mogsy @ BiblioSanctum recently posted…Book Review: The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith
Ha ha, yeah she was something else, lol.
Great review! I’m planning on picking this one up later this week, and I’m looking forward to it but also trying to hedge my expectations a little since most of the reviews I’ve seen so far were similar to yours: “good, but not great”, basically. I haven’t read anything by Arnopp before so if I even remotely like it, I think I’ll definitely pick up some of his other work since the general consensus seems to be that his other stuff is better!
Destiny @ Howling Libraries recently posted…Dead Meat: Day 1 — Nick Clausen
I hope you review it, Destiny, I love to know what you think! And if you don’t enjoy it, I do highly recommend his first book.
That’s such a shame that the supernatural elements didn’t work in what otherwise sounds like a good read.
Suzanne @ The Bookish Libra recently posted…Top Ten Tuesday – The ‘Happy Birthday to Me’ Edition
At least for me, I know other readers really loved the supernatural parts.
This sounds really interesting and a great concept. Love the review. Thank you for sharing
Thanks Mir! I was a lot of fun:-)
Oh dear. The reviews for this are really not encouraging at all. And I was so happy to have a copy (although I realise I’m seriously behind this month). Perhaps I should read his first book instead. No. I guess I’ll read it but. Expectations managed.
Lynn
It has been a while since I’ve read someone being THIS disappointed by an ending and it’s really unfortunate, especially when there were so many things that were so interesting about this book. Great honest review, Tammy!
Lashaan Balasingam recently posted…Baltimore Omnibus Vol. 1 by Mike Mignola
I’m always surprised by the twists and revelations in books! –I definitely agree cell phones are bad: I shun them completely!
Thanks for the heads up. Will be a skip for me.