An entertaining rom-com / supernatural mystery mash-up, this story is narrated by Melody Bittersweet, who has inherited a talent for talking to ghosts. She opens her own ghostbusting agency, with her fiesty friend Marina and timid nerd Artie, plus a greedy pug which she adopts. They endeavour to solve a murder mystery which is preventing the present owner of a haunted mansion from turning it into a rest home. Their rival is Leo Dark, who broke Melody’s heart, while the other side of the triangle is Fletcher, a journalist she fancies but they shouldn’t be together because he’s an enemy of her family.

This is a fun read which gets a little serious at times, not an easy balance. I suspect that it may not have enough heat for habitual romance readers, and not enough spookiness for the ghost fans, but it was definitely a different and memorable read. The writing did seem repetitive at times. For example, people seem to ‘huff’ a lot, with nineteen uses of the word! Melody also mentions her age, twenty-seven, a total of twelve times in the book.

I assumed the book was recently published, but it has a history. Its previous title was The Skeletons of Scarborough House by Kitty French, published by Bookouture in 2016. The Amazon page for that title says that it was previously published as Melody Bittersweet and the Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency. Its current title, published by Penguin in 2025, is definitely the best of the three and its cover ties into the spooky rom-com trend.