The Ghost of Us

I just want to start this by saying that if I knew this was a sapphic novel written by a man, I probably wouldn't have requested this on NetGalley. It was my fault for not looking deeper into this, considering it is in the synopsis, but I don't like to know too much about books before I start them. The concept of this was super interesting to me; a ghost hunter finds a ghost and he plays matchmaker for her. But that's more or less where my enjoyment of this book ended. The way the characters talked was just so cringe, it felt like the author had never talked to a teenager before and was using lingo that he saw on the internet to make them more "realistic". The "douche nozzle (flirty)" really sent me over the edge. I think I will always have a problem with women written by men, and the queer women written by men is just a given. I was interested enough to finish the book so I guess that's good but I really did not have a good time. I tried to remove myself from the discomfort of someone writing a queer romance in a relationship they've never or ever will be a part of but every time the main character and the love interest flirted, it was hard to not think about it. Every time the main character thought or talked about the love interest, it felt like a teenage boy lusting over the hottest girl in the world. The romance wasn't about how much she liked this girl.... it was about how much she wanted to get with her. And don't get me started on the "I'm a ghost and I think if I get my sister laid I'll move on to the afterlife!" This author does have a MLM book that seems interesting enough but I probably won't read anything else by this author. But I will give him props for adding "douche nozzle (flirty)" to my vocabulary.