The Perfectly Fine House by Stephen Kozeniewski and Wile E. Young (  Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Grindhouse Press, 2020

ISBN: 13:978-1-9419-18-63-0

Available: Kindle, paperback

The “breathers” depicted in The Perfectly Fine House do the usual: work, shop, have kids. The ghosts are busy, too. Sometimes, they help out with the great-grandkids, travel to exotic locations or hang out with their friends. They go to their local bar, smoke sage to get high, and maybe meet up with a young Unenlightened person who likes to date dead people.

But being dead isn’t all fun and games. There are those who disrespectfully walk straight through you, and you risk being arrested for any “unsanctioned possessions.” It’s also really disturbing to find a friend or relative “relapsing” because you can actually see the wounds that killed him. For the ghosts in this book, things get even worse than that when they realize their community is disappearing from Earth.

Stephen Koseniewski and Wile E. Young have written a clever and frequently amusing tale that blends ghostly and human lifestyles with appealing characters. Donna, a “surrogate” who makes love matches between the dead and the living, and her brother Kyle, killed in a motorcycle accident, struggle to find out what is causing the holes all over the world into which ghosts are vanishing. Characters include an exorcist love interest for Donna, a friend of Kyle’s who died “trying to flash fry a turkey in gasoline,” and a poet who comes up with a way to execute ghosts. Will Bonnie, the first to witness a disappearance, be able to apply her scientific savvy in time to stop the destruction? Will Donna lose her brother forever? At a time when having no “ghostsense” is a disability, you need to be careful to avoid provoking the dead “to go all poltergeist on you.” Good luck with that. Recommended.

Contains: adult situations and language

Reviewed by Nova Hadley