This was recommended by a friend as ‘a book with a cat on the cover’ as part of our Reading Challenge 2017 – and so I downloaded it purely on that basis!
Here’s the blurb:
“Allie Callas has a normal-ish job: she’s the owner and sole employee of Finders Keepers, a service dedicated to the time-consuming task of finding (and finding out) things on the tiny Greek island of Merope. The fact that she’s been seeing the dead ever since she can remember is incidental. It’s nothing more than a … a … a birthmark on her soul and a pain in her butt.
Except now death is getting personal and the dead are getting bossy. Her best friend (and neighbor) has been murdered, and her ghost is back to tell Allie that the events leading up to her death are hazy (very unhelpful), and that she wants Allie to figure out whodunit.
Allie isn’t a cop, but the wall-banging, hump-happy Detective Leo Samaras is just one floor away. Does he want her help? Nooo … But he wouldn’t mind taking a good, hard look at her bedroom.
With the dead starting to make unreasonable demands on her time, can Allie figure out who killed her friend, without taking a one-way trip to the grave herself? Will she start cursing the day she started seeing ghosts? And where did the hefty ghost cat that has moved into her apartment come from anyway?
FAMILY GHOULS is the first book in the Greek Ghouls series: a comedic mystery set in Greece and steeped in ouzo.”
I have to say I really enjoyed this! It was an easy read and a mixture of romantic comedy / murder mystery / ghost story – but all very cleverly written and amusing. I liked Allie immediately – and would quite like to be her friend and share her supply of cupcakes.
It’s set it Greece – and I sometimes struggled with the names and Greek words – but it added a different element which was fun – and I now know some rude words should I holiday in Greece in the future.
My only minor misgivings were that there were occasions when there were words missing in sentences, only little words like to / of / in etc – but still a bit frustrating. There were also 2 instances of continuity errors – once when Allie’s sister’s car is described as a sedan in one chapter and a people carrier in the next, and another where a previous event was described as happening at ‘Starbucks’ when it had happened at ‘Merope’s Best’ – the local coffee shop. I realise that I am completely anal – and I have clearly missed my calling as a book editor!!
But these are only minor issues, it really did leave me wanting more – which
a) is the sign of a good book and
b) is particularly good when it’s the first book in a new series (which is another topic I need to tick off my reading challenge list – so I can always move this sideways should I find another book I want to read with a cat on the cover #winning)
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