Amanda 's Reviews > The Ghost Notebooks

I can’t really compare The Ghost Notebooks to any other book I’ve read. The narrative took the perspective of one of the main characters, Nick Beron. It also occasionally contained excerpts from books by the writer, Edmund Wright, the original owner of the Wright House, the perspective of Wright during his lifetime, and thoughts from an unknown female throughout the entirety of her life, I thought that these multiple perspectives and writing styles made the writing as a whole confusing and unwieldy at times.

Although I would place this book within the paranormal genre, I would not classify this book as horror. I enjoyed the plot and mystery of the story. I couldn’t predict where it was going. There were some unanswered questions in this story such as (view spoiler)[ how exactly Nick ended up in a mental hospital not once but twice. I know the events that led up to this but Dolnick conveniently withheld these details (hide spoiler)]. Dolnick is a talented writer and he was able to phrase descriptions in brilliant ways. He grabbed me from the first sentence:

Let me explain, first of all, that I was never one of those people who believed, even a little bit, in ghosts. I knew people who did – people with office jobs and shoe inserts and wallets stuffed with sandwich punch cards – and I could never quite hide my bewilderment when I realized that they weren’t kidding.

Even though this wasn’t a humorous book by any means, Dolnick’s descriptions were witty and well thought out:

…She had on jeans and a flannel shirt, and she had the long gray hair of someone who cares deeply about horses.

Despite all of this, I had mixed feelings about this book. I think the dysfunction between Nick and Hannah’s relationship throughout the book did not make this a really pleasurable read. I have neutral feelings about this book.

I would make a disclaimer that anyone who flinches at reading about animal cruelty, this isn’t the book for you. (view spoiler)[ There was a drowning of a nest of baby bird at one point in the book and I had to skip over entirely. Since this incident was a one off that didn’t seem to have much bearing on the story (at the time), I was able to forge on (hide spoiler)].