Gettin’ Spicy With Ghosts!

You’re So Dead To Me – Grimdale Graveyard Mysteries, Book 1 by Steffanie Holmes (2023) – After an accident gave her the ability to see and hear ghosts, Bree’s life got complicated. Her hometown of Grimdale treats her like a freak. The three ghosts that host her house won’t leave her alone. When she couldn’t take it any more she packed a backpack and left. A few years later, a family issue has brought her back, and nothing is better. In fact, on her first day as a tour guide at the local, historic cemetery, she finds a dead body. And a ghost that needs her help. Not to mention that the three ghosts she’s known her whole life turn out to be gorgeous male spirits! Life just keeps getting complicated (and hot!)

Why I Liked It – Some fun ghost stories with a lot of spice!

This was another book that fell into my lap. It’s not really in my usual wheelhouse of reading. But the reviews were good and I was looking for something light and fun to read. Steffanie Holmes delivered all of that and some surprises. There’s plenty of traditional ghost stuff here. Ghosts are spirits of dead people who died with something important unresolved in their life. Unless (or until) that thing is resolved, they are stuck between worlds. Resolving those issues is tough when no one can see or talk with you. When Bree acquires that ability, the ghosts tend to fall over themselves to get her attention. That relationship becomes increasingly burdensome as she enters adolescence, and there’s a break with her friends.

What’s different in modern ghost stories (and in many other traditional genres), is that there is a decidedly sexy part of the story. It’s hinted at for most of the book, but gets explicit in the last twenty percent or so. Consider this your warning if sexy stuff isn’t something you want in your reading. From my point of view (and I certain that I am NOT in the core target demo for this series, lol), it’s all handled very skillfully and sexily!

Bree ran away from her issues in Grimdale without a plan beyond escaping. Her travels have taken her around the world. Along the way, she’s gained considerable experience, but she’s still a young woman who hasn’t faced the issues in her life. An issue with her parents calls her home, but that only makes everything more complicated. As does the fact that she realizes that her three ghostly friends are incredibly gorgeous. Edward is the royal prince who specialized in living the most dissolute life possible. His book of (generally agreed to be awful) poetry was lost in the years following his death. Pax is a Roman soldier who was never given a proper burial. Finally, there is the blind adventurer Ambrose. The book that described his amazing journey across the face of the earth has also been lost.

These characters are interesting, but they’re also my primary irritation with the book. They are caricatures right up to the moment that the sexy stuff starts. Edward is a libido on two legs, Pax is mostly comic relief. Imagine the Three Stooges compressed into the body of Conan the Barbarian. Meanwhile Ambrose is the shy, awkward that Bree has always doted on. Which makes little sense for a man who after he lost his sight commenced a solo journey across the “civilized” world in the 1800s. It strikes me that they could have been more interesting if they were less one dimensional. That starts to change in the final section of the book. I’ll hope that it continues in the following three parts of the story.

In the end, there’s a lot more good than bad here. It’s a “kooky, spooky, cozy mystery with spice”. And a lot of fun along the way.

Rating – **** Recommended