True 5/5 ⭐️ (or a 6/5 if I could because I truly adored this entire book).
Spiciness: 2/5

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the opportunity to review this book!

I am incredibly impressed with Shelly Jay Shore for this being her debut book. This is an incredible story about grief, life and death, finding love, the challenges and expectations of being the oldest daughter, and ghosts. The writing is beautifully done, and is genuinely funny.

This story follows a transgender Jewish man, however I feel that all the subject matter was so approachable and delicately handled. I, as a cis-gendered, non-Jewish woman, found this book to be so relatable and easy to follow.

This book made me both laugh and cry, and just absolutely resonated with me. This is a beautifully done novel, and I would not change a single thing about it.

Ezra Friedman sees ghosts. He's gotten pretty good at ignoring them, but he still stays as far away from his family's funeral home as possible. But when his work situation and his family both fall apart at the same time, he finds himself back in the place he's tried to hard to run from. And if that weren't bad enough, his new apartment comes with a very gorgeous downstairs neighbor, Jonathan--and the ghost of Jonathan's husband, who seems to be breaking all the ghostly rules.

Rules for Ghosting explores so many different kinds of love, and all the joys, sorrows, and complications that come with loving someone deeply. I laughed out loud at multiple points, and I cried more than once. It is genuinely one of my favorite books I have ever read, and I fell in love with it the moment I read an early version and immediately started screaming about it to everyone I know, even though I knew it would be years until they could read it. But that time has finally come, and I am so excited that such a beautiful book is out in the world.
Rules for Ghosting is genuinely in my top five favorite books of all time, and I think everyone should go read it right now.

Thanks, NetGalley for the advance copy.

Not bad but not my favorite thing. I love the diversity but it was very complex for me. I prefer little reading in this aspect. Well well-written and definitely worth reading. I think I went into the book with a different mentality or I guess I wasn’t in my element. But do recommend reading.

Thank you @netgalley and @randomhouse for the eARC of Rules of Ghosting by @shellyjayshore in exchange for an honest review.

📖📖 Book Review 📖📖 I will start this review with the disclosure that I am biased. I love a good story with ghosts. And while I’ve lived in a very haunted house for over thirty years, I have never actually seen my ghost friends (others have) and would be scared out of my mind if I ever did. Ezra sees dead people…everywhere. So much so that he based his selection of an apartment so that he would not have to live with a ghost, and has done his very best to avoid the funeral home his family runs. Rules of Ghosting is a hilariously heartfelt story that reminds us that family is messy, love is love, and it is okay to feel all the feelings no matter how complicated they are. This is a quirky and beautiful book that flawlessly blends the beautiful traditions of Jewish culture with a moving modern-day story of family, love, and everything in-between.

5/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review is posted on Goodreads and will be on Instagram ahead of the publication date!

There's a lot to like about this story. Ezra is a captivating character, even though I sometimes wanted to smack him. I loved the detailed treatment of Jewish death rituals. I wanted to vomit at the birth doula stuff (and the idea that Ezra might want to bear a child), but, as always, I realize I'm in the minority there.

I think, in the end, the birth-y stuff takes this out of a potential reread category for me, which means I'll never go back and reconsider how I feel about the various family relationships explored in the story, which is kind of a shame. Based on a first reading, I'd probably be inclined to throw half of the family members out a window, and I suspect that's not the desired response.

Overall, this is a well-written, complex book, but it isn't as much a book for me as I'd hoped it would be.

My thanks to the publisher/NetGalley for an advance copy.

This book was breathtaking and hauntingly beautiful (no pun intended). The raw emotions that this story managed to invoke in me has easily placed it in my book hall of fame. The characters are flawed, yet so damn loveable and feel so real. The themes on grief, both for the dead and for the living felt like a sucker punch in the loveliest way possible. This is a story I will be coming back to read over and over again and I most definitely will be purchasing a physical copy to have on bookself.