Midnight Tide Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 978-1386657071
Paranormal Romance, 2021

Abigail Reed feels that she and her sweetheart Seth Rogerson are drifting away in Elle Beaumont’s Die From a Broken Heart.

Seth has a fairly new job as a film crew member of a show that goes around visiting supposedly haunted buildings, and Abigail decides to tag along on his latest assignment, hoping that some quiet time will help get them closer together again.

Sure, why not? That’s only logical. With everyone running around the set, doing this and that, she’s definitely going to find plenty of opportunities to cuddle up with him.

Only, she realizes that Green Meadow Inn is indeed haunted, and because this is not a straightforward horror story, Jonathan Rainwater is actually hot and sweet to her instead of some hideous rotting zombie wanting to devour everyone.

Uh oh, is a love triangle brewing?

As folks can probably tell from the title of the story, this one isn’t a conventional romance story in the sense that there are some tweaks to the typical romance story structure to keep things interesting.

Indeed, the developments at the later parts of the story catch me by surprise, and that’s when I sit up and go, “Hey, I’m being surprised while reading a romantic story! How freaking long has that last happened?”

While I do appreciate this story, there is one aspect of it that disappoints me: Jonathan. Yikes, that fellow is as dull as the wallpaper of the place he haunts. I’m sure he’s hot and that’s nice, but that guy just nods at everything Abigail says and does, and has all the personality of a tree stump.

Also, I have to give the author the side eye because even as Abigail is sighing over wanting to get back with Seth, she has the heroine going all first and second base with Jonathan. It’s hard for me to feel for the heroine’s dilemma, much less root for her, when she’s behaving like her feelings for Seth are far more trivial and even frivolous than she claims.

By the time she decides on which guy she’d like to ride the pony with forever and ever, it’s not the culmination of a tumultuous emotional journey as much as it is something that can be boiled down to: “What, Guy A is gone? Whatever, I’m gonna hump Guy B now, whee!”

This one is a well-written, deftly paced story with an admittedly popular and commonly done ghost story trope, and despite its length, it feels like a complete, self-contained story that never feels too rushed or under-baked. All these virtues make it an enjoyable read for me.

However, the emotional aspects of the story are nowhere as well done as the technical aspects, which is an issue because this one is also marketed as a romance.

Oh well, I win some, I lose some.