This is billed as a ghost story, but that isn’t really the designation I would put upon it. Fantasy erotica maybe. Stranger than just ghosts or the paranormal. It is too steeped in fantasy to really capture my imagination at all. What is most frustrating is that the writer can actually spin a tale, and the beginning had some promise, despite the impossibilities it presented. Well, you cannot criticize that it isn’t realistic when you knew it was a “ghost story” going in, can you?

It has a similar plot thread to a book that I adore, [b:A Portrait of Jennie|6900349|A Portrait of Jennie|Robert Nathan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459761270l/6900349._SX50_.jpg|1883139]. I say this to emphasize that it is not the impossibilities that make this book not work, it is the author’s inability to present those impossibilities in a way that makes you want to believe in them. I was far more interested in the backstories of the two main characters, a reclusive artist who saw ghosts regularly in his childhood and is grieving the long ago death of his twin sister, and the dead girl who returns from the dead, in the flesh, with her own story of tragedy and loss. This is why I say it is “billed as a ghost story”, because by definition, ghosts are spirits, not people, and they do not return in a flesh and blood incarnation.

The erotic part doesn’t really start until you are ¾ of the way into the story and invested enough to finish. I still contemplated just closing the book and walking away. Not that sex itself is bothersome, but oh my goodness PLEASE, I do not need pages of detailed explanation. I wasn’t looking for a textbook. I know how it is done. At the risk of a spoiler, the artists’ first sexual encounter is in a graveyard with a ghost. Sex with people is sometimes strange enough to picture mentally, sex with ghosts and dead (but not) girls is even stranger.

This might have been a 3 star read for me at one point. It deteriorated into 1.5 stars, and so I compromised at 2. This book came to me as a recommendation from a friend. I’m not sure how I am going to tell her about my reaction to it. Oddly enough, it has a number of 5-star reviews and an overall rating of 3.92. Just goes to show you how differently we readers can see things. ( )

On a stormy November night in 1848, a ship carrying more than a hundred Irish emigrants ran aground twenty miles off the coast of Maine. Many were saved, but some were not -- including a young girl who died crying out the name of her brother. In the present day, the artist Oisin MacDara lives in self-imposed exile on Tiranogue -- the small island where the shipwrecked Irish settled. The past is Oisin's curse, as memories of the twin sister who died tragically when he was a boy haunt him still. Then on a quiet All Hallows' Eve, a restless spirit is beckoned into his home by a candle flickering in the window: the ghost of the girl whose brief life ended on Tiranogue's shore more than a century earlier. In Oisin's house she seeks comfort and warmth, and a chance at the life that was denied her so long ago. For a lonely man chained by painful memories, nothing will ever be the same again.

I really was enthralled by this story although it took me a while to sort out what was happening and who was who. It's the story, based on legends of Irish ghosts, of two sets of siblings. One set was twins, a boy Oisin and his sister Nieve, children of Irish immigrants living in Maine. The other was a seven-year-old girl Aisling and her older brother Darragh, who came to America on a boat during the great famine in Ireland. With each set of siblings, one died, bringing great pain to the survivor. The adventures and interaction of these sets of siblings begin when seven-year-old Aisling becomes a ghost but appears in real life to Oisin, an adult artist.

This is quite an involved novel, but I really enjoyed the process of trying to figure out what was happening. I became a bit squeamish with the stories of sexual attraction of individuals of vastly different ages. That wasn't really the point of this book, though, as you shall see as the story progresses.

The plotting for this book was amazing. I pretty much could keep up with it which was good as I needed to know what the relationships of all the characters were to each other.

I'm not usually interested in reading about Ireland or Irish immigrants, but this is already the second book I've read by Lisa Carey, and I'm seriously ready to try more. ( )

One of my favorite things in the world is picking up a book knowing nothing about it, and becoming completely absorbed and blown away when I read it. This one latched on almost immediately. I went through about every emotion I had reading this book, as well as slightly confused. This was brilliant. I've never read anything like it, and unfortunately, I almost definitely never will. ( )

This is a ghost story. And a romance, and the story of a family, and another family, and the way the outcasts of both find each other. Oisin is a man who, as a child, saw ghosts, but stopped seeing them right when there was one in particular he needed to see. Oisin is a boy who grows up to take in a new ghost, not the ghost of the child he longs to see but a different ghost who wants a second chance. The whole story is steeped in Irish folklore (e.g., banshees) and tinged with history (the ghost's personal history is centered on the potato blight of 1845-47), but both are just far enough back to ground the story without bogging it down.

No obvious flaws to this book, but still not a five-star book. Reasonably light (and, whoo boy, at times steamy) but not fluffy. This is one of Carey's earlier novels, and by comparison it shows, but this is a strong offering on its own. ( )