Ruby’s Ghost

Husk’s supernatural contemporary romance novella features an unusual love triangle. After responsible Tate and party-girl Ruby break up, he offers her a ride home on his motorcycle, and they are hit by a drunk driver. Ruby dies and Tate spends the rest of the book in a coma, caught between life and death. The only person who can see Tate’s roaming spirit is Eloise, a college student who now lives in his childhood home. As Ruby tries to pull Tate into the afterlife, Eloise keeps him linked to the world of the living. Husk (Brightwater Blood) creates a vivid picture of the strange world that spirits see (“Through the mist he thought he glimpsed walls, or was it trees, or people?”), but the real world is less clear and the romance never quite gels. As the story moves steadily toward an inevitable resolution, readers may wish that Husk had more time to spend on her creative depiction of the afterlife. Agent: Eric Ruben, the Ruben Agency. (May)