Book Review: Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun by Christine Pope

Every once in a while, I pick up a book expecting a fun, cozy read and end up becoming completely and utterly invested in people who do not exist.

Christine Pope’s Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun did exactly that.

It has an old house, a clairvoyant heroine, a teenage ghost who insists his accidental death wasn’t actually an accident, a charming local historian, a coffeehouse-owning new best friend, and a wellness guru who is entirely too fond of beige.

Really, what more could I ask for?

Meet Phoebe Finch

Phoebe Finch restores old and historic homes for a living, which is already enough to make me want to follow her around and look at houses with her. But Phoebe also happens to be clairvoyant.

For most of her life, those two parts of herself have managed to coexist fairly peacefully. Phoebe knows she can sense things other people can’t, but she also knows that telling people their expensive historic home comes with an unexpected supernatural tenant isn’t necessarily great for business.

Unfortunately, she makes exactly that mistake.

After telling a pair of well-to-do Southern California clients that their home has a presence, Phoebe is unceremoniously fired. Worse, word gets around, and suddenly her professional reputation is in tatters.

So she does what any perfectly rational person might do when her life implodes.

She buys an old house sight unseen on Whidbey Island and leaves Southern California behind.

Obviously.

And because this is a paranormal cozy mystery, we all know there’s absolutely no chance that old house is simply going to be an old house.

This House Comes With Lanny

Phoebe’s new home has its very own ghost: Lanny, a teenage boy who died there years earlier.

The official story is that eighteen-year-old Lanny had been drinking, fell, hit his head, and died in 1988.

Lanny has a slightly different version.

He is convinced someone whacked him over the head.

There’s just one teensy problem.

He can’t remember who did it—or much of what happened that night.

That immediately gives Phoebe a mystery to solve, but what I loved even more was the relationship that develops between Phoebe and Lanny. This isn’t a ghost who occasionally appears, delivers an ominous clue, and disappears through a wall.

Phoebe essentially has a roommate.

A roommate who is perpetually eighteen.

Living with a teenage boy who is never going to grow up leads to some genuinely funny interactions, and their relationship gives the story a warmth I wasn’t necessarily expecting when I started it. Lanny becomes much more than the mystery Phoebe needs to solve. I cared about him, and I wanted Phoebe to find out what happened to him because he deserved to know.

And Then There’s the Rest of Whidbey Island

One of the things Pope does particularly well here is surround Phoebe with characters who make her new home begin to feel like an actual community.

Talia, who owns the local coffeehouse, quickly becomes a friend, and I loved that Phoebe gets a genuine female friendship as she starts rebuilding her life.

Then there’s Theo, who runs the local Heritage Center.

Historic-home restorer meets guy who runs the Heritage Center?

Christine Pope knew exactly what she was doing.

Theo becomes both an important part of Phoebe’s investigation and her love interest, and their relationship develops alongside the mystery rather than swallowing it whole. The romance is sweet, believable, and decidedly low-spice, which fits the cozy tone of the story perfectly.

And then we have Amaranth Hawthorne.

Amaranth owns a wellness spa.

Amaranth has opinions.

Amaranth is also far, far too fond of beige.

I don’t know why that particular detail delighted me as much as it did, but it did.

Unfortunately for Phoebe, Amaranth also decides that the newcomer is bringing some sort of negative energy to the community and manages to convince a surprisingly large percentage of the town that Phoebe might be a problem.

Because nothing says positive energy quite like organizing the neighbors against the new woman in town.

There’s More Going On Here Than a Ghost Story

This was one of my favorite aspects of the book.

Phoebe arrives on Whidbey Island because her reputation was damaged when she told the truth about something other people couldn’t—or wouldn’t—believe.

Now she has Lanny, whose own story has essentially been decided for him.

He was drinking.

He was depressed.

He fell.

End of story.

Things become even more interesting when old journal pages supposedly written by Lanny surface and appear to confirm that he had been depressed before his death.

Except Lanny insists he wasn’t.

Suddenly, Phoebe isn’t simply investigating how a teenage boy died. She’s trying to figure out why the story everyone believes about him doesn’t match the person standing—or, technically, haunting—right in front of her.

I loved that parallel.

Both Phoebe and Lanny are dealing, in very different ways, with other people deciding who they are and what their stories should be.

And because revealing anything more would take us directly into Spoiler Land, I’m stopping right there.

This Is Exactly What I Want From a Cozy Paranormal Mystery

The story moves.

There wasn’t a point where I found myself wondering when we were going to get back to the mystery. I wanted to know what happened to Lanny, I wanted to know what Phoebe would uncover next, and I wanted to see what happened with Theo.

At the same time, Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun never loses that comfortable cozy feeling. There’s humor, friendship, a developing romance, a quirky community, an old house, and just enough paranormal weirdness to make the whole thing fun.

It isn’t scary.

It isn’t gruesome.

The romance doesn’t suddenly turn into an entirely different book.

It’s simply a fast-moving, funny, thoroughly enjoyable paranormal cozy mystery that kept me invested from beginning to end.

Which brings me to my one complaint.

Christine Pope, We Need to Talk

This is a standalone.

A standalone.

Christine, you cannot introduce me to Phoebe, give her a teenage ghost roommate, introduce Talia and the coffeehouse, put Theo in charge of the Heritage Center, let me become invested in Phoebe and Theo’s budding relationship, give me an entire island community—

—and then expect me to just leave.

I would happily read another book about these characters. I want to watch Phoebe and Theo’s relationship continue to develop. I want more of Phoebe and Lanny’s interactions. I want Talia. I want the Heritage Center. Hell, at this point I’ll even take more beige.

But apparently I must remain disappointed.

Rude.

Final Thoughts

Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun was exactly the kind of book I needed: clever without trying too hard to be clever, funny without turning its characters into caricatures, romantic without letting the romance overpower the mystery, and cozy while still giving me a mystery I genuinely wanted solved.

Most importantly, I cared about these people.

I cared about Phoebe finding a place where she could stop hiding part of herself. I cared about Lanny discovering what really happened to him. I cared about the friendships Phoebe was beginning to build, and I absolutely cared about where things were going with Theo.

That’s ultimately what turned this from a fun paranormal mystery into a five-star read for me.

I didn’t just want the mystery solved.

I wanted more time with the people solving it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 out of 5 stars

Recommended for: readers who love paranormal cozy mysteries, haunted houses, amateur sleuths, small-town communities, ghosts with personality, low-spice romance, historic homes, and heroines starting over.

And readers who can apparently handle the emotional hardship of discovering that the characters they’ve become attached to live in a standalone.

I’m still working on that last one. 😂 If like me you’re struggling, why not check out another one of Christine’s books like Killing Time. You can read my review here and quickly realize that The Witches of Mingus Mountain will be your next series on your TBR bile.