This is a book with some interesting themes about life, death, and love. While it was a pretty decent read, I didn't feel like this book was great because some parts felt like they didn't belong and were just mundane. The raven was my favorite though.

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**TL;DR**: Definitely not my favorite Beagle but has some of the messaging and moments I enjoy in his work.
**Source**: Netgalley, thank you to the publisher

**Plot**: An older gentleman who lives in a graveyard watches the soap opera of two ghosts falling in love.
**Characters**: The characters felt like genuine people! But that was probably the problem in that I couldn’t stand two of them.
**Setting**: The graveyard was great, I wish we’d gotten a touch more description and visuals but I enjoyed what we had.
**Romance/Spooky**: I absolutely didn’t buy any of that romance between the ghosts. I couldn’t stand it in fact. This wasn’t at all spooky and more ‘spoopy’.

**Thoughts**:

I hate to say something isn’t for me, especially from an author I’ve loved so much before but this really wasn’t it. A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle is one of his first works (if not his first) and is billed as a ghostly love story. We follow two ghosts, Michael and Laura and one elderly man who lives in the graveyard and can see and interact with them. They two die at different times and meet while haunting the cemetery that they all live in.

There is a lot that could be said about the messaging here. One man who cannot bring himself to live, watching the dead who are struggling to not loose their lives. And the idea of life and love after death, etc. Sadly for me this one lost a lot of the potential messages in the dull and seemingly useless moments. One particular section almost frustrated me to the point of anger. We end up following one woman’s mundane, stream of consciousness day and it really detracted from the overall book for me.

Sadly, A Fine and Private Place is not a Beagle I can wholeheartedly recommend. If you’re looking for something that might have some good messaging deeply buried within it it’s probably worth a peek, but for me it’s gonna be a no.