You know how when you’re reading a book and you need to put it down so you can get food, water, go to the bathroom, pick up your kids, go to bed, etc so you’re looking for that “stopping point” where you feel comfortable being able to do that? Kind of like the moment you’re ok to pause the TV because it’s not like you’ll miss anything – I mean it’s paused that’s why it was invented so we could stop living like cave animals. Well…..this book had no good stopping point.

I completely get how illogical that sounds because it is a BOOK! Meaning you can read one page, one paragraph or one sentence and put it down then come back and pick up exactly where you left off and not miss anything – that’s a huge benefit of a book. There just isn’t a moment where you feel like you’ll be okay not knowing what’s going to happen next. Which is how I found myself exhausted, eyes watering, and desperately needing to fall asleep but unable to until I knew how this was going to end.

It starts off like any typical ghost story. Girl finds ghost, kills ghost, hangs out with dead mom and goes to her college class. It’s a little more involved and action packed than that with one heck of a gut punch opening but it’s good enough that when I started I was curious enough to keep going. It doesn’t take long before the thrills, twist, turns, mysteries and of course ghosts gets ramped up. The action scenes with exorcisms and ghost slayings can be intense.

Verstraete knows how to write an addictive story that moves faster than you think possible with an air of intensity that just sucks you in. I loved the sprinkling of pop culture such as references to Buffy that added bits of humor that really worked with her story. She knew how to word them just right so instead of coming off cheesy they’re fun and will bring a smile to your face.

It appears this may be the first in a series and though the book ends as if it could be a standalone I’m really hoping there is more.

Ghost Slayer by Majanka Verstraete pretty much fulfills every YA cliché. While I still had some hopes when I started reading it, I found myself rolling my eyes more and more often towards the middle and the end of the book. It felt like a 2010 throwback … and at a bad one at that.

Things I did not enjoy:
・ The main character Kaelyn is a Mary Sue par excellence. She's got the green eyes and the dark hair and pretends to be super badass because she's a Ghost Slayer. Except she doesn't really slay ghosts, and every time she encounters one, she founds herself glued to the floor. A shame, considering she's been doing this for years.
・ Even worse: She stops pretending to be strong as soon as the love interest aka Alex Miller is around. He touches her and – BOOM – his touch suddenly is everything that's holding her together, that's making her strong. Without him, she couldn't survive anything. (That's pretty much quoted.)
・ The story didn't make SENSE. Literally NOTHING was explained. Every time the topic Ghost Slayers comes up, an explanation is left out. Even the most basic questions (what makes Kaelyn a Ghost Slayer, how did she end up becoming one, why is she so bad at slaying ghosts?) are left unanswered.
・ No, wait, it actually gets worse. Some questions are answered, and answered so badly that the book made even less sense. It was a mess. There were plotholes everywhere, giving me the feeling I was reading a first draft, not an arc.
・ The writing was bad as well. When I first started reading <i>Ghost Slayer</i>, I thought it was just a little bit too simple (especially considering Kaelyn is 21 yet behaves like a ten-year-old), but it really is bad. It's repetitive. There's just telling, not showing.
・ I didn't connect to any characters. Because of a) the bad writing, b) the bland characters, c) the gaping plotholes. Self-explanatory.

I'm sorry, but … I literally can't say anything good about this book. I could read it pretty quickly because of the simple-yet-really-bad writing, but in the end, it was a waste of my time. Don't repeat my mistake.

First book for me by this author. Interesting twist on the "slayer" theme. Well done, easy read that I enjoyed very much, will be looking for the next book.

* I received a free copy by Netgalley*
4.5 stars
This was a great horror book - I guess it's actually paranormal, oh well-
The plot was very intriguing and left me hanging by a thread. The thing that positively stunned me was the short time line, -which i usually don't like-. But the author kept it interesting even though 60% of the book was spent in the same place.
Bravo for her! Plot-twists-yes I have written plural- , writing that pulls one in...
What more could I have wished for?
PD that half star less is for the beginning, which wasn't as good as the rest.

What a mystery, suspense, action, chills running through my skin. A great written story about young Gosthslayer although the story does remind me of a mini-series Rose Red all the haunting and the ghost. It was very intense read that kept me on the edge and what I liked that it was not predictable at all. What I did miss is a little bit more loving those few kisses were not enough. Kaelyn is a great character we see her good and the bad side but she can kick as and I liked her.
I volunteered to review an ARC of this book for Netgelly

Absolutely loved this book, scary but fun, would love to read more :)

A new author and a new series which I will be alert for in future. In short: a kick-ass heroine, a gothic haunted mansion, and a plethora of ghosts, including a particularly dangerous, deranged ghost. What more could readers require? - A sequel and quickly please! (I'm already waiting to throw my money at the sequel when it becomes available.)
I read this story in one sitting and with more than a few supernatural induced shivers, it's an extremely enjoyable ghost story.

With thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for my ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

With a title like this, it was bound to grab my attention. I am all in for some epic ghost slaying. And for the most part I did get some epic ghost slaying. What I missed was the depth. In a few different kind of places.
While the whole premise of The Ghost Slayer caught my attention, that is where it stayed. It had my attention but didn’t truly engage me. It couldn’t make me move emotionally. When the book initially started I thought that maybe this was a world where ghosts was something everyone knew about. That would have been great. But as we moved through a few chapters it became clear this was not the case. It was just our world, but with ghost slayers and mediums. And other things. All very interesting but very little world building was done. These terms were thrown around but very little was explained. Demons were just tossed into the conversation as if I was suppose to know their place in this world. I needed more explanation, more thought into how everything fitted into this world.
The same thing was the case for the background of our characters. I missed a whole lot here and there. How did Kaelyn really roll into the ghost slaying and so on. How did she meet Alex. Because even the end gave nothing about that away while it did delve into that background. Just not enough.
And also I missed depth in the relationships. Just because you write the word friends to describe two characters relationship doesn’t mean it will come across that on the page. And the same goes for the romance. That whole ending romance wise just fell so very flat for me as I could not feel an inch of chemistry between these two characters.
And it is a shame because I think the idea, the world and the characters could have been great had the execution been better. There is potential here for sure. The idea of ghost slayers and their powers for instance is certainly something interesting, but also the hints about her father and her mother could create a great deepening of background and story. Kaelyn and Alex also have great potential for good characters if only they would get more deepening.
The author’s writing style in itself flows incredibly well and I did fly through this book in one sitting. Because of the good things I see I am interested in reading on with this series.

"I'm a ghost slayer. When I kill ghosts, they stay dead. There's no way for them to return."

Kaelyn is a 21 years old ghost slayer. When a trip to a haunted house with her class and teacher for a project in parapsychology is planned Kaelyn knows that the house is haunted. What she doesn't see coming is that the evil ghost in the house knows Kaelyn already.

This book is okay and good for a read in between. I read the second half in the middle of the night and was even a little spooked when I finished reading. The story became more and more interesting with every page. I liked that there were different ways of getting rid of a ghost. While Kaelyn is able to slay them with a knife since she has the abilities of a ghost slayer people like Alex need to perform rituals with salt and candles. Kaelyn loathes Alex for somehing that happened in the past. It gets revealed in the end but I didn't like the reasoning behind it. It was the reason why the whole story played out the way it did but I think it would and could have been better if Kaelyn and Alex would actually have been arguing about something. But that is my personal opinion. It is still nice to read. Especially in the dark.

Please note that I was provided an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book :)

This book starts out strong, but kind of crumples in the middle and then gets back on track by the end. I hesitated between the three and four star mark, but that beginning was just so good that it ultimately upped the rating.

Ghost Slayer is an almost YA/New Adult Urban fantasy type book. Although I enjoy such books, it's been a while between drinks so all of this felt fresh for me. Kaelyn is your typical kick butt heroine, nursing a broken heart but still getting the job done. After slaying wayward ghosts, she goes home to her own dead mother, goes to college and thinks about where the money for rent is going to come from. You know? Average, except the ghost killing part.

It's only when a class trip for her Supernatural Class (is there such a thing in America? If so cool!) starts going wrong that the action heats up. This is when the writing and the book suffers as Kaelyn muddles through. We have characters hiding things, important information getting lost in translation. If I heard one more person say ghosts can't hurt you after JUST witnessing one hurt them I was going to scream, and not in fear!

The book also suffers from a large cast of characters, many of whom don't do much at all. It leaves things unexplained, but not in a let's find out next time kind of way (although, we probably will find out more in book two, this is a series after all. I just needed more key information in THIS book) There are times where I feel the writing needs to be stronger, and some of the sentences were just plain lazy. Probably just needs a little polishing, although that could just be me.

However, for all the minor things wrong with this book I also enjoyed many aspects. There's a subtle romance with backstory. Real friendships develop. A good introduction to the Supernatural, although obviously the world at large doesn't know about ghosts, demons, curses etc. I really will keep my eye out for book two, because I think this series has potential. Four stars, even though I hovered between three and four for ages!

Twenty-one-year-old Kaelyn has spent half her life hunting ghosts and killing them. But she's not like the other ghost hunters who have to rely on spells and curses to banish ghosts back to where they came from, hoping that they don't come back. When Kaelyn kills a ghost, they stay dead.

But in Mortimer Hall, a behemoth of a house, Kaelyn is about to face the most powerful and life-threatening ghost she ever met, and what she doesn't know is that the ghost has been waiting just for her...

This was a really good start to a series that I will look forward to reading more in the future. The storyline starts of well with a good mix of characters.

Kaelyn does seem to come off younger than a twenty one year old, but they might just be me!!

I would like the other stories to explain more about Kaelyn past as there are quite a few unanswered questions.

Really good story easy to read with characters I would like to follow more in the future.

Ghosts are right up my alley and I loved this book. Thank you netgalley for the arc for an honest review. It was fantastic and I read this in one setting. It was such a good read and it was different and fun.

2.5 Stars
This was an Ok read. There wasn't really anything exceptional about it, something to read when you want something different.

Kaelyn is a ghost slayer, she goes on a school trip with several of her classmates to a haunted mansion, things start to happen, people die and evil is vanquished. There's not really much to it. I wanted to know why the MC decided to start slaying ghosts, when/how did she know she had that power, it just seemed a lot of things were glossed over and not explained.

For a book with more than a 100 pages we don't really get to connect with the characters, Kaelyn likes to kill ghosts and that's about it. We meet Alex who she loathes but it turns out she doesn't really, she just had a traumatic experience and repressed the memory. I don't want to be harsh but everything felt like a cliche.

I hope the author can provide more structure in the upcoming books as this was ok enough to have me interested in the next one.

Ghost Slayer by Majanka Verstraele.
Twenty-one-year-old Kaelyn has spent half her life hunting ghosts and killing them. But she's not like the other ghost hunters who have to rely on spells and curses to banish ghosts back to where they came from, hoping that they don't come back. When Kaelyn kills a ghost, they stay dead.But in Mortimer Hall, a behemoth of a house, Kaelyn is about to face the most powerful and life-threatening ghost she ever met, and what she doesn't know is that the ghost has been waiting just for her...
OMG an absolutely fantastic read with brilliant characters. I loved Kaelyn. She was my favourite character. Did not see that coming. What a twister of a read. Chilling and dark. 5*. Highly recommended. Netgalley and fire quill publishing.

! First of all every thing about this book calls out to every bookworm out there, the cover, the blurb, the title. The title did it for me right away and reading the blurb definitely solidified for me that I just had to read this!! All my favorite tropes in one book, YES PLEASE!!! I'm so glad for getting a copy of this. I loved reading it, it was a super fast read

This is the first book that I have read by Majanka Verstraete. I always enjoy reading books that have a paranormal aspect in it; and this ghost slayer is awesome. Kaelyn is a ghost slayer; she has the ability to banish ghost and not worry about them coming back. Unfortunately things don't always work out how you participate. Reading this story it becomes apparent that there is more going on with Kaelyn and Alex and it makes this book all the more interesting. I cannot wait to read the next book, Thank you NetGalley and Majanka Verstraete for allowing me to read and give an honest review of this book.