This was a book I picked up and was very excited to read because I’m a huge Jane Austen fan, and Northanger Abbey is one of her books that is not often revisited (Pride & Prejudice, Emma and Sense & Sensibility get the modern version treatment all the time). I knew going in that it was young adult and from the title and description it was focused on ghosts/paranormal at the school.

I’m sad to report that it didn’t live up to the hype I’d created for myself… maybe I need to re-read the original, which I know isn’t my fave of Austen’s stories, but I found my attention wandering and having to go back to re-read passages because the storyline didn’t always hold my interest. I’m sure if it was a college age new adult instead of high school young adult romance, with a much faster paced plot and far less family or “best friend” drama, this could have been better for me.

It was definitely slow and too many young teen friendship and applying for college and dealing with family angst and not enough about the relationship with the interesting new boy at school and the project about the ghost legends on campus. Had it focused a lot more on that, I think it would have been a lot more interesting all-around!

Overall, if you’re looking for a very young, young adult read that’s basically about friendship drama and totally brutal family dynamics, a little about the awkward senior year of high school and trying to make new friends, and a little about ghost legends in the area - maybe this one will be better for you than it was for me.

I received an advance copy from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press (Wednesday Books), and this is my honest opinion.

I love Jane Austen modernizations and I knew I had to have this one. Hattie is struggling. After her dad passed away she is no longer into ghost hunting, but that is what Northanger is known for. It is quite annoying to have all these people around her into it and she just wants out. Enter Kit. He is a ghost hunter that Hattie has been tasked with being an ambassador for. Can he open her back up to the world of ghost hunting and maybe earn her heart or will it all go down in flames just like her college applications?
I really liked the depth of this novel. I feel like it was on the lighter side, but touched so many issues that were near to my heart and I completely understood why she was so shut off to the ghost hunting world. At first I was like, what is the issue!? Then when it all came out, my heart just broke for her. I loved how real the family dynamic was and how navigating tough issues weren't just glossed over.
Thank you to St. Martins, Amanda Quain and Netgalley for an early copy.

I am not a huge Jane Austen fan (don't stone me!), so I have no idea what her story is about. My review is based solely on this book without comparisons.

This coming-of-age YA novel has many themes running through it. Hattie is grieving her father's passing while trying to fit into the high school where her mother is the headmistress. I found it odd that she always referred to her as Dr. Tilney and rarely mom. That speaks volumes about their relationship or lack thereof. Hattie does have a good relationship with her younger brother Liam, but her older sister, Freddie, is lost in her own way.

Enter Kit Morland. He is a scholarship student from a paranormal society. His enthusiasm for all things ghosts brings up some feelings in Hattie that she hasn't felt for many years. However, in order to be the "good" daughter, she pushes those emotions down and scoffs at his love of ghosts. It doesn't help that they are assigned a project that is to prove or disprove the idea of ghosts. Despite their journalistic endeavors, love does come into play over time. I enjoyed watching their relationship blossom and for Hattie to realize that maybe there is more to her life than the boxes she is checking off some list.

Love, friendship, disagreements, and more bring this story together. The characters are varied but focus primarily on Kit and Hattie. I really came to adore Liam, especially when he discovered a new love. Even Freddie manages to redeem herself in the end.

This was an enjoyable story, and we give it 4 paws up.

Middle child Hattie is having an identity crisis. After her father died and her mom submerged herself in work, Hattie has picked up the slack. It isn't until Kit moves to (the supposedly haunted) school that Hattie starts to see herself as she really is. Unfortunately, that rocks the boat with her friends and family.
Opinion
I was really excited when I saw that this is the first in a series. I absolutely loved the setting and characters for this book and am curious as to who the next book will be written about. (It is Hattie's siblings, her friends, someone new????)
As far as young adult romances go, this book was pretty stellar. With the plot having Hattie and Kit looking into the school being haunted, I believe teens will fall for the book's charms like I did.
I do think that the characters were a bit extreme. (Mom was focused on work to the exclusion of everything else, for example.) But the book had such a nice flow and the resolution will make your heart melt.
I would feel comfortable putting this book into the hands of a young teen. This book was pretty awesome and mild enough on the spice meter for young adults.
Many thanks to Net Galley and St. Martins Press (my favorite publisher) for providing me with an ARC of this book.

A very cute, at times creepy YA story about young love, loss, dealing with worldly pressures, and being true to yourself. This one got me out of a reading slump and had me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. This book just put a smile on my face.

Would recommend to anyone who enjoys wholesome YA love and creepy vibes. Also for anyone who loves retellings of classics with a little spin. Perfect fall not-so-dark academia vibes!

Can’t wait to read more of Quain’s work!

A gender-bent contemporary retelling of a Jane Austen book? Hells yeah, baby!

Hattie goes to a widely known haunted school yet she doesn't believe in ghosts (anymore). She is assigned as the newbie's (Kit) ambassador to show him around, and this boy is a ghost's number 1 fan. After getting paired up on a project together, the two will go ghost hunting--one wanting to prove the existence of ghosts and the other to prove the impossibility of it.

Slow burn, gender-bent retelling, paranormal romance. This was a very cute YA romance. I loved the golden retriever feel of Kit, and he was a very refreshing MMC. This was a great book to read while travelling. It was cute, witty, and fun. The character story of Hattie was very well-done. It was very heartfelt at times

Ghosted is a cute, raw, contemporary Northanger Abbey retelling with a dash of the paranormal. If you’re a fan of Jane Austen and YA contemporary, this is the perfect mash-up of both. Plus, this book has ghost hunting in it which makes it even better.

Hattie Tilney is starting her senior year at Northanger Abbey with a plan for success. She’s got the perfect friends, the perfect image, and the perfect college application for her dream school. What could go wrong?

Answer: everything.

When Hattie meets Kit, everything changes. The true Hattie comes out. She finds herself opening up to Kit and being vulnerable in a way she hasn’t in years. After her father died, she adopted a whole new persona as a coping mechanism. One of the biggest changes was she went from loving everything related to the paranormal and ghosts to being a staunch disbeliever. Kit, on the other hand, fully believes in ghosts and the paranormal.

Ghosted was a refreshing, fun, emotional read. Hattie’s growth throughout the book was written extremely well. Her grief, and her family’s grief, felt so raw and real. Everyone deals with loss differently and this book showcased that perfectly. This book also has a super cute romance that will have you rooting for Kit and Hattie from their very first meeting.

If you are looking for a fun contemporary book with great characters and themes, this is a must-read.

A high school senior dealing with her father’s death is paired with a new student at school. As the two teens get closer, the senior learns how to live beyond the restrictions she’s set for herself. Author Amanda Quain adapts Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey in the well-intentioned but ultimately lightweight novel Ghosted.

Hattie Tilney can’t believe how much everyone at her Massachusetts boarding school, Northanger Abbey, believes in ghosts. It’s practically written into the school’s DNA. The school even has a whole club dedicated to investigating paranormal activities. Hattie, though, is having none of it.

There’s no scientific proof for ghosts, but she doesn’t want to waste her time explaining that to anyone. She’s survived three years at Northanger where her mother is the headmistress. Now she just needs to get through senior year, and everything will be fine. Her master plan is all set: get into Udolpho University’s prestigious pre-law program and prove to her mother once and for all that she can be the perfect student. Maybe then her mother will pay attention to her.

When her mother—who even Hattie calls Dr. Tilney—summons her to her office, Hattie is expecting some sort of acknowledgment. Instead Dr. Tilney makes Hattie the school’s ambassador to new student Kit Morland. Kit is a junior and has just transferred from Florida on a ghost-hunting scholarship of all things. From the outset, Kit seems ready to embrace all things other-worldly. He also seems really into Hattie. She can’t figure out the “why” of either.

After all, she’s the only one who knows how much she used to love ghost stories and wondering about the afterlife. That was back when her dad was alive, when the two of them used to swap stories like trading cards. With him gone and her mother going all automaton on the family, Hattie can’t waste her time on silly things like ghosts.

She’s the only one keeping the family going. Someone has to look after her little brother, Liam. Hattie can’t depend on their older sister, Freddie, to do basic things like cook meals and clean. Between housework and schoolwork, Hattie’s too busy to help Kit find ghosts.

But she is the Northanger ambassador assigned to Kit, after all, so it’s her duty to show him around. As the two start spending more time together, Hattie finds herself opening to Kit in a way she never could with her best friends, Izzy and Priya. Kit doesn’t even know her full history with her dad, yet he has a way of convincing Hattie that sometimes the best things in life to believe in are the ones you can’t see.

Author Amanda Quain writes with an earnestness and ease that showcases her experience with the YA genre. However, the book lacks many essential details that would ground it in reality. The plot feels haphazard at best.

Kit hints at a family of six sisters and parents, but other than that and the fact that he’s from a small Florida town readers know almost nothing about him. Quain offers a few bits of information but leaves it incomplete. A vague mention or two to some sort of bullying for his ghost-loving ways pops up but is mostly ignored. Kit owns many t-shirts from various bands and wears beanies most of the time, but these details don’t build toward making him a three-dimensional character.

Likewise, Hattie’s mom is shown to be cold and unfeeling, but readers don’t know much about her beyond the fact that she’s the head of the boarding school and, according to Hattie, expects perfection. The few interactions between Hattie and her mom don’t necessarily support this. Readers only have Hattie’s insistence to guide them through the relationship with her mom.

Hattie’s best friends and siblings are also cardboard cutouts. Izzy’s father is the director of a cult classic that was filmed at the boarding school, but the transactional friendship she shares with Hattie that Hattie deems acceptable. Other best friend Priya is simply painted as the studious one and that’s it. Freddie and Liam, as Hattie’s siblings, get a little more page time, but readers won’t feel like they know them that well.

The plot, too, feels paper thin in many places and veers into wild turns in others. The inevitable romance between Hattie and Kit is sweet and honest; readers waiting for that slow burn will definitely enjoy it. However, the young love track of the book isn’t enough to carry it.

Honestly, the one word I'd use to describe this book is underwhelming. Ghosted is a Northanger Abbey retelling centered around Hattie, a 17 year girl in the midst of college applications who does not believe in ghosts. After her father died four years ago, the magic of the world seemed lost to her. Enter Kit Moreland, a boy with a ghost-hunting passion who Hattie gets thrown together with at school, who could change her life. Honestly, for majority of this book, I felt like there was no plot to this book. It felt like going thorough the motions, and there was no driving force. Also, for all the focus on ghosts and ghost hunting in the aesthetic and marketing of the book, there was hardly any of that in the actual book. The relationship between Hattie and Kit grew so quickly that it felt forced, and the antagonistic characters of this book were so blatant. The writing was a lot more telling instead of showing, and that took a lot away from the book. I was initially quite excited for this book, but it just felt like such a forced read in the end. There was hardly any build up in any character and the conflict resolution felt like a simple way to tie up loose ends. The conflict itself felt quite forced, because there wasn't any driving force to the book. I would likely not recommend this book to other people.

Admittedly, I don’t remember Northanger Abbey all that well, but I love a modern Austen adaptation no matter what. And this one was super fun. It had just the right emphasis on ghosts and ghost hunting, paired with relatable issues for the lead characters that made them feel real. And made me feel old and so far removed from high school, but overall, this was a really fun read.

The way Hattie closed herself off from people was hard to deal with at times, but I understood that was her big flaw, one she was going to learn and grow from, so I went with it. She can be the typical judgmental teenager but that just made her believable and not falsely perfect.

The romance aspect was very sweet, I loved Kit as a character in general. He’s sweet and earnest and clever and a good friend. But I especially loved him as someone Hattie found herself unwillingly falling for, for all the same reasons I loved him as a reader. The pace of their relationship was really good too, the progression very natural. I loved them together.

Burdened by the promise she made her father on his deathbed, Hattie struggles to maintain the image of the perfect daughter and to basically raise her younger brother. Her mother is mostly absent and her older sister is nearly a train wreck. But not everything is as Hattie thought it was. Realizations are made as the story progressed, particularly as her unlikely friendship with Kit evolves. Kit is the sunshine where Hattie has only ever seen ‘gloom’ through the barriers she has put around herself.
This story is about ghosts (actual ghosts and ghost stories), but it is even more about digging up the ghosts from within - discovering the path towards finding your true self. Hattie is a master at keeping people at a distance - even her best friends - but Kit chips away at this throughout the story.
If you’re looking for a hopeful coming of age story, then this is a good one. I really enjoyed the relationship between Kit and Hattie, but I loved how her bother Liam also came out of his shell. This story is also about grief and healing broken relationships. On the surface it may seem like just a book about ghost hunting, but it is so much more. I hope it can touch your heart the way it did mine.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc of the book. The opinions expressed are honest an my own.

A big thank you to Amanda Quain, St. Martins Press and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion. Ghosted is out and ready to enjoy.

In this retelling of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Hattie is forced to confront her very complicated feelings towards ghosts and ghost hunters. After losing her ghost loving father at the beginning of high school Hattie has vowed that she will have nothing to do with any of the ghost stories that surround her famously haunted school. That is until she is paired with the cute new cute to write and film a journalist story about said hauntings. At the same time, she is forced to examine the complicated relationships she has with her family, her friends and the new guy, Kit. I though this book was a beautiful look at the way grief effects different people and how they change the way we view and experience relationships. I think it also touched on what it feels like to go through the growing pains that is becoming an adult. Even with the sadder aspects of the book, it was still packed full of humor, romance and warmth. If you are looking for a spooky and endearing read, please go check out Ghosted.

I haven’t read Northanger Abbey so let me start this review by saying I don’t believe I needed to have read it to enjoy this novel. It is an interesting and engaging story on its own. However, due to my lack of knowledge on Jane Austens classic, I’m sorry to say I can’t offer any insight into the books’ connections to its predecessor. That being said, I really enjoyed this novel. I found Hattie’s mental gymnastics of trying to be perfect all the time exhausting but she was also a realistic depiction of a teenage girl going through more than she knows how to handle. The nuances of her relationship with her family, her friends and herself while navigating the loss of her father made her a character I couldn’t help but root for. She was sympathetic and Kit became a likeable character very quickly by just being someone she was able to ease up around. Overall this story stood on its own as a quality YA novel about grief, family turmoil and personal growth.

I really enoyed this book. I think that it has so many elements that i enoyed. i loved the ghost elements and the romacne was really fun. This book was more friends to more or strangers to friends to more with a bit of tension. I loved the setting and also really liked all the elements in this story that adressed like graduation and end of the high school thing including romance and drama. I got def see this series going several different ways def a soild read!

I think I just wasn’t in the mood for this one? I liked her previous novel. I also haven’t read Northanger Abbey and that might have been the problem.

I went into this book expecting ghost adventures and came out feeling so wholesome about a girl who finally found herself, and dealt with the ghosts of her own past. It’s been a little minute since I’ve read a coming-of-age story, but I forgot how good they can be. This was really well written and touched on how loss can effect everyone in a family, and how differently they cope. Especially when children are involved. Being a teenager in itself is hard, but added in with grief, trying to find your way with no guidance, and then elevated expectations to live up to… it can feel so daunting.

Hattie attends Northanger Abbey high school, which is famously and allegedly haunted. Once upon a time, this would have been a dream for her. She and her dad bonded over their love for the paranormal. But her dad passed right before she started at the high school, and now she’s no longer a believer. Very anti-ghost. Her mom is the headmistress, but this doesn’t make it any easier for her. Her mom is just as detached and cold as if they don’t even know each other. But yet she has all these expectations of her, making Hattie feel like she has to be the perfect daughter; an opposition of her older sister, Freddie, who is what one would call “a mess”. Their younger brother Liam has cocooned himself in his shell, and Hattie feels doubt he’ll ever come back out.

But then everything changes once Dr. Tilley (her mom), assigns her to be an ambassador to Kit Morland, a new student who is there on a ghost-hunting scholarship. The two are paired up on a journalism assignment to investigate the paranormal activity that makes Northanger Abbey so infamous. But as Hattie and Kit explore the school, and get to know each other better, those of Northanger Abbey are not the only ghosts that will be dug up.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Amanda Quain for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Please don't come for me, but I've never read Northanger Abbey. I don't know how much, if any, this book has in common with that one, I was sold by the title, a haunted high-school, and the idea of a ghost-hunting scholarship - sign me up!
There was so much more to this story than just ghost-hunting, though. It's a story of a broken family trying to pick up the pieces after the tragic loss of their father and husband. It's the story of Hattie, whose facade as the perfect daughter and student is about to crumble under the weight she's placed on herself.

I very much enjoyed this book. Of course I loved the idea of a haunted high school and I would have been thrilled to be Kit's ambassador. And I wish there had been a little more focus on the ghost hunting, to be honest. But as fun as that aspect of the book was, it was second to Hattie's journey and how she needed to reconcile who she was before her dad died, with who she is now- and who she wanted to be. It wasn't an easy journey by any means, there were a lot of bumps along the way, and a lot of growing up to do, but I really liked the person she became.

As a huge fan of Jane Austen, I found Amanda Quain's Ghosted, to be a superb retelling of Northanger Abbey. Realistic and spooky, the characters were endearing and I walked away thinking this wasn't the typical YA story. 5 stars!

I really enjoyed this loose Northanger Abbey retelling from Amanda Quain. I can definitely tell that there has been some growth in her writing since Accomplished. The author had more of handle on the pacing and plot, which helped make her character work shine a little more. Not that I didn't like her previous book, I did. I just really appreciated how the plot points of Northanger Abbey were reworked and adapted for a young, contemporary audience.
In Ghosted, we follow Hattie Tilney, middle daughter to the headmaster of Northanger, a former abbey turned boarding school with a haunted past. Hattie works very hard to maintain her status as overachieving golden child and semi-popular girl in school. The first day of senior year, Hattie is assigned to be Northanger Abassador to new kid in school, Kit Moreland (our Catherine Moreland), who is there on scholarship from a paranormal investigative society who donates money to this 'haunted' school. What starts as an assignment, soon turns into a friendship as Hattie finds that she is able to let down some of her walls around Kit. I really liked their dynamic!
What I really appreciated was the exploration of Hattie's family life. Her father passed away suddenly a few years before, her mother is work oriented and not very involved, and her older sister is spiraling a little bit after dropping out of college. The only family she gets along with is her little brother Liam. I liked seeing how the interpersonal relationships between family members changed throughout the story. As much as this is a cute, fun story about friendship, it is also an exploration of identity, relationships, and not hiding yourself away.
I think if liked her previous book or books by Emma Lord, this would be one to check out!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into this one. I was unsure of the voice of the MC and if it would sound realistic. I can tell you it is definitely believable and the story kept me curious for what was coming. It’s a compelling read that I am still putting together my thoughts on. Although it deals with tough topics, it’s well written and I encourage others to check it out.

Thank to NetGalley and the Publisher for the arc.