Official Review: Ghost Girl by Stephen Hazlett

[Hans08]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Ghost Girl" by Stephen Hazlett.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Ghost Girl by Stephen Hazlett is a short May-December romance novel about Joe, a widow at 51, who lives in a senior citizens complex trying to seclude himself from the rest of the world. The story starts off with a chance encounter between Joe and 22 year old Maddy, whose cherry personality he found irresistible and a breath of fresh air. Before he knows it, the young grad student has drastically taken control of his life and his lonely heart. The story depicts the usual problems and emotions that goes with being in an older man-younger woman relationship.

Reading this book felt like riding a bullet train. Everything happened so fast, it got me a little woozy in the end. So much has happened in just a short amount of time both in the storyline and number of pages. Although its fast pacing leaves something to be desired, I believe the message the author wanted to deliver was clear for the reader to grasp. In fact, it felt like the author sacrificed the writing for the message.

As for the characters, personally, it was quite a little hard to connect with. The storyline made it impossible to like them as every action snowballs into this massive undesirable characters that you just have to shake your head at. It made the story easily predictable in the end. The ending was no longer a surprise but more like a vindication for something you know it deserves.

Also read some typo or grammatical errors along the way, like “regular breathes” and “pick up you and your things”. It was very distracting. Since this is a book with only less than a hundred pages, it was natural to assume that errors like this will be hard to miss by the author and editor.

The title intrigued me from the very start and after reading the whole book, I think it was a clever and perfect choice for the book. I think it was one, if not the only redeeming quality of this book.

I rate this book a 2 out of 4 stars. It’s one of those forgettable books but still one might enjoy reading at some point boredom strikes. It wasn’t that good, but it has potential. The author might have a great vision with this book but had a poor execution of it with the characters, the storyline and the writing. Nonetheless, reading Ghost Girl made me realize that you don’t need to love a book to learn something from it.

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Ghost Girl
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