This was such an adorable romance! I went into this with no knowledge of the book—other than that it was a Northanger Abbey retelling (which I have never read). I was a little nervous when the prologue mentioned ghosts, but the paranormal element is less of a spooky ghost story and more of an intriguing side quest for Hattie and Kit.

I felt like Hattie was well developed, if a little bland at times. Kit was funny and kind—but I could have used a little more emotional depth from him. I could have used more depth for most of the side characters. Especially Liam and Freddy, who were extremely underdeveloped considering how important their relationships with Hattie were to the story. Freddy especially read as two-dimensional and far too immature for a college-age woman. That said, despite the lack of depth, their relationships with Hattie were all complex and thoughtfully written. Especially the romance. Kit was such a fun love interest, and I really appreciated so many aspects of his character and how well he complimented Hattie.

While I needed a little more depth to really connect to the story, I still found this to be enjoyable and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a fluffy romance with a little more substance.

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC! All views reflected are my own.

It was cute. Would be a great Sept/Oct read for spooky season. Reminded me a little of Maureen Johnson's books - a cross between the Stevie Bell series and Shades of London.

Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to enjoy and read this title. I didn't love this book but I also didn't hate it. The writing is very young but other than that I don't have many more complaints.

Thank you Wednesday/St Martin's for the copy of Ghosted. I adored this book, I am a fan of Austen but also simply a fan of quality YA reads... this honors the original Northanger Abbey text but is also it's own, which is great. It is nuanced with themes on grief, growing up, a little romance, hints of ghosts and hauntings and mystery, and deft with recognizing that adolescents are not one note, they have depth. Quain has clear affection for her characters and deftness with storytelling and also understands her readers: honoring a classic but offering contemporary vibes and fresh approaches to time honored storytelling is tricky but it happens here.

"Never Have I Ever meets The X-Files in Amanda Quain's Ghosted, a gender-bent contemporary retelling of the Jane Austen classic, Northanger Abbey.

Hattie Tilney isn't a believer. Yes, she's a senior at America's most (allegedly) haunted high school, Northanger Abbey. But ever since her paranormal-loving dad passed away, she's hung up her Ghostbusters suit, put away the EMF detectors, and moved on. She has enough to worry about in the land of the living - like taking care of her younger brother, Liam, while their older sister spirals out and their mother, Northanger's formidable headmistress, buries herself in work. If Hattie just tries hard enough and keeps that overachiever mask on tight through graduation, maybe her mom will finally notice her.

But the mask starts slipping when Hattie's assigned to be an ambassador to Kit Morland, who's just transferred to Northanger on - what else - a ghost-hunting scholarship. The two are paired up for an investigative project on the school's paranormal activity, and Hattie quickly strikes a deal: Kit will present whatever ghostly evidence he can find to prove that the campus is haunted, and Hattie will prove it's not. But as they explore the abandoned tunnels and foggy graveyards of Northanger, Hattie starts to realize that Kit might be the kind of person who makes her want to believe in something - and someone - for the first time.

With her signature wit and slow-burn romance, Amanda Quain turns another Austen classic on its head in this sparkling retelling that proves sometimes the ghosts are just a metaphor after all."

Wait, do ghost-hunting scholarships exist? Because if they do I really need to know!

YA romance with Ghost Hunting. Yes please. I enjoyed the story and I loved the setting of the gothic abbey turned school that was just so spooky yet so 21st Century school. I think coming of age stories are always enjoyable, seeing how someone deals with tragedy and overcomes and senior year in high school is such a pivotal time that it creates a built in tension.
1. Setting and Ghost Hunting - I wish there had been more ghost hunting. There were so many stories of the Abbey and we got a few but not indepth. I loved the flash back to Hattie's dad telling the stories and I loved when she told the stories to the Ghost Brigade. The twins ghost story was good but completed. As Hattie and Kit were doing their project, I wish they had "resolved" one of the ghost stories.
2. The love story - Kit and Hattie were adorable. I loved how Kit brought the old Hattie. She has created such a mask to cover her grief. He was able to open her up and let her remember what her passions in life were. She spent 3 years hiding everything and he slowly started pulling her out of herself. I loved Kit, He was just sunshine for Hattie and her friends and her whole family.
3. Her friends - these were really complex relationships. Hattie spent so long saying they weren't really friends it was hard to figure out the relationship...did she really want to like them or not? I loved the ending where she said "we planned a girls trip but we may not do it but the option is all that matters". It was so a perfect resolution to a very contentious friendship.
4. Family - Oh my. This family was grieving in so many ways. They were all so broker over the death of their father and spouse. It brought out kinda of the worse in all of them. As they came together to help Hattie you can see the building of bridges to get them to be better. It was very emotional and lovely.

Overall I really enjoyed the story and the characters and loved the ghost stories. Would recommended to anyone that enjoys YA romance, school settings and coming of age stories.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy of the book.

I received this book for free from Netgalley for an honest review.

A great romantic read. Perfect for book clubs too. I read it with mine. Sweet and steamy

When Hattie’s mom became the headmistress of Northanger Abbey School, Hattie’s life changed forever. Hattie’s mom is cold and distant, her older sister is annoying, and she’s worried about her brother. Worst of all, Hattie’s father died unexpectedly a week into moving to Northanger Abbey. Four years later, Hattie is now in her senior year of high school and applying to colleges. All she wants is to make her mom proud. To her dismay, she’s saddled with being the ambassador to Kit- a scholarship student who firmly believes in ghosts. As Kit and Hattie argue over the existence of ghosts, she discovers that some of the things she’s left buried will come back to haunt her.

Ghosted is an excellent YA contemporary. Hattie deals with realistic issues such as college application deadlines while wrestling with stories of the ghosts that walk Northanger Abbey. Hattie is such an earnest character who is doing her best to juggle all of her tasks without dropping any. She is such a good sister, while also struggling to acknowledge the grief that she and other family members are feeling. I enjoyed the ghost stories and how Hattie allowed Kit to draw her further out of her shell. I love how Amanda Quain portrayed grief and the many forms that it can take. This would be perfect for readers who enjoy Jane Austen retellings, ghost stories, and characters bringing out the best in each other.

Thank you so much to Amanda Quain, Wednesday Books, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review

For publisher: My review will be posted on Instagram, Goodreads, Amazon, Storygraph, and Barnes & Noble etc

Ghosted is a YA re-telling of Jane Austen’s classic novel, Northhanger Abbey. (full disclosure - I’ve never read it). It follows Hattie, a senior at Northhanger Abbey - the most haunted HS in America - who used to love ghosts, ghost stories and the history behind those stories until her ghost loving dad passed away right before moving to her new school. For three years Hattie has tried to reinvent herself. She takes care of her younger brother, avoids her rebellious sister and makes herself into the perfect daughter for her workaholic and absent mother. She puts on a front for everybody, even her best friends, never sharing much of her real self, while avoiding her real life ghosts. Then, during her senior year Kit transfers to her school (on a ghost hunting scholarship) and turns her world upside down. She’s assigned to be his student ambassador and is paired up with him to do a journalism projects on the paranormal activities in the school.

On the surface this book is about ghosts and young love, but there is so much more going on here. It’s about a grieving family after the loss of their dad and husband. Everybody in the family is dealing with this loss in a different way and nobody understand the others grieving process. It’s about opening up and letting go, it’s about healing and tackling your own personal ghosts. It’s about acceptance. I really enjoyed watching Hattie and her family’s journey to healing . I loved her relationship with Kit and how she just couldn’t help but fall back in love with something she was once so passionate about because of his pure joy and enthusiasm for ghost hunting - she just couldn’t help herself.

This book was fun yet touching and I enjoyed reading it. Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the digital ARC of this book. This book will be out on July 25.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as I did the previous book she released last year. I thought I would have enjoyed it more but I found it sort of boring.

Ghosted is a charming twist on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, plonking it into the modern day world and swapping the genders of the protagonists. The result is fun and should please most teenagers, but I can't rate it higher than a B.

Hattie Tillney is an ex-paranormal investigator who’s given up her passion since her father passed away. He has never appeared to her in ghost form, which has shattered her faith in the afterlife. Her remaining living relatives dwell at Northanger Abbey, the world’s most haunted school, of which her mother is the distracted headmistress. Hattie is preoccupied with caring for her siblings, young Liam and older Freddie, and all of them are lost in their own personal grief. Determined to put the past behind her, she’s stunned when she makes the acquaintance of Kit Morland.

Kit is an eager ghost-lover who absolutely believes that spirits are real. Unfortunately, he’s traveled over on a ghost hunting scholarship, and his studies involve trying to figure out if all of those rumors about Northanger Abbey are true. Hattie and Kit split their search in two directions: Hattie will prove the ghosts aren’t real and Kit will search for proof they are. Along the way they get closer, and all of Kit’s preconceptions about love and death are challenged.

There’s just enough of the original novel left in Ghosted to make this book feel like a proper tribute without it feeling like a poor copy of the original story. It is, of course, not very Austeninan in its telling, but what is, aside from the real deal? Kit and Hattie are two likable teenagers who have actual issues to deal with, familial and with their futures. Their love story is sweet without being sappy.

The paranormal thread is delightful, a good reflection of Catherine’s obsessions in the original novel. But the worldbuilding and tech help make this stand out on its own. The Tilney family is a realistically dysfunctional but still easy to like and relate to. And what’s really enjoyable is the book’s talk of faith – in life, not just death.

This is an entertaining little volume with a sparkly sense of humor, although I reckon adults aren’t likely to enjoy it as much as kids; it’s perhaps a little too pat in its morals. But Ghosted will be a pleasant diversion for younger readers.

I have never read the book Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen which this book is a retelling of so I'm not sure how this compares to that but I did enjoy the story on it's own. As someone who loves a good ghost hunting youtube video, I was instantly interested in this book. I would definitely recommend it to people that are fans of Shane and Ryan's Buzzfeed: unsolved.

Northanger Abbey doesn't have the popularity of some of Jane Austen's novels, but it's always been one of my favorites. The very tongue in cheek humor, the satire Gothic setting, innocent Catherine, and the family dynamics of the Tilneys.

I enjoyed Ghosted for what it was. If you want to straight up compare it to Northanger Abbey, it does not have the tongue-in-cheek humor in the narration, which was understandable but sad. Ghosted has more self-discovery, parent dynamics, and friend drama, as you would expect from a YA novel.

Kit was a delight. Hattie was a little on the more boring side, but at the same time, that was in fact her character: blend in, don't rock the boat, be the perfect friend, daughter, etc. And she does slowly find her way.

Overall, I liked the book, but I would have appreciated more depth and nuance. While I enjoy a good trope, I don't love flat characters who behave in very two-dimensional ways. While there is some excusing for that because everything was seen through Hattie's eyes and she was making assumptions about people that weren't the full truth, it still felt like most of the characters were straight up stereotypes: the rebellious sister, the demanding/distant parent, the popular best friend, the sidekick to the popular best friend who goes along with everything, the kid brother, etc.

Thanks to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Myth: 4/5

This was such a sweet, heartfelt story. Hattie did everything she could to push down the pain of the loss of her father, but somewhere in there, she lost who she was. A coming of age story focused on dealing with grief.

Magic: NA

As with the original, this Northanger Abbey remix plays more with the idea of the paranormal than anything actually paranormal. Interest in the paranormal is a subplot, but we’re not talking about paranormal characters in the novel.

Overall: 4/5

A cute high school romance, a lot of family complexity, and a character finding herself after pushing a lot away in an attempt to deal with her grief.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book.

Hattie Tilney used to be a big believer in teh paranormal until her father's death. Since then she's focused all of her energy on being "normal". All of that changes when new student Kit Morland arrives and starts to challenge everything she thought she'd figured out about herself.

What I liked about this book is that it focused on grief and how clamming up and not dealing with it will affect someone. I also loved the growth and change in Hattie personally and within her family's dynamic.

I really liked the theme of the book. The family dynamic was very interesting. The characters were complex and had depth. The book deals with hard things. The thing that I didn't like was all the language. I understand that the characters are teenagers but I don't really want to read that kind of language.

This book took me completely by surprise! It's truly a book about a family grieving the sudden loss of their larger then life father with each person handling things in a different way.
What I loved:
- Kit!!!
- Liam and Erik
- the creepy school vibes

What could have been better:
- more ghost experiences. We were told the ghost stories and legends but no true ghost experiences were had during the book. Since Kit is a ghost enthusiast, and on a ghost scholarship, I think this should have been explored more

Northanger Abbey gets a YA retelling and it's not quite up to par. If you take away the Austen adaptation, it's okay, but that's now how it's offered up. It takes quite some time for the story to really get off the ground, but the constant self-deprecation of Hattie got ridiculously annoying. There was not nearly enough of the paranormal either.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book! It was a cute and easy read. I think it could have gone deeper into most aspects of the story but it did get the over point across. Though I’m not a big fan of everything being wrapped in a bow in the last chapters, it didn’t take away from the story.

📖ARC Review📖
Ghosted by Amanda Quain
Pages: 320
Arc: yes
⭐️: 3.5/5

Synopsis: Hattie Tilney goes to a very haunted high school—or does she? Hattie no longer believes in ghosts since her dad died. Can a newcomer to Northanger Abbey make her believe again? What will happen when her internal ghosts are discovered?

What I liked:
-The love story was cute! Although, it’s a little clean for my taste, but that’s YA for ya. And they are like..17, so that makes sense lol
-the thought of the haunted high school
-the display of grief and how it wreaks havoc on us all in different ways

What I feel could have been better:
-Hattie’s self-deprecating got old after a while
-I feel like we could have leaned into the ghosts more? There was definitely missed opportunities there

Overall..solid 3.5/5. Cute love story 🩷

Thank you to NetGalley for this arc and my opinion is my honest review after having read this book.