Spirited

Spirited - Mary Behre This was a very strange book, almost as if two authors were involved or two different books/ideas were mashed together.
The story just doesn't flow. Even though we know as a reader what everyone wants to talk about - for some reason the conversation/interview/scene invariably ends abruptly and the reader is shunted to another location or character. This happened again and again... and again. Often taking several conversations to get an answer to a question that one of the characters had posed in their head much earlier in the book.
The dialogue is incredibly clunky, sometimes failing to make sense.
The H nicknaming the h 'precious' is extremely condescending and really kind of creepy. I mean Gollum or tea-cup poodle kind of creepy. I flinched every time.
There was no reason given for the h's magic powers to suddenly change/increase other than it was convenient for the author.
And the whole keeping secrets by h (because of what happened with her ex-husband) often failed to make sense when people are dying/being attacked. Her stubborn refusal was both frustrating and annoying.
Which brings us to the main ghost, first she makes some sense but can only say a few sentences. Later in the book she's spouting whole pages of dialogue but completely bonkers.
The author needs to decide if this is a romance or a paranormal suspense read - as it stands - it failed to give me a believable romance (the characters just didn't seem a good match and their dialogue was woeful) and it failed to give me a suspenseful read as I could see the majority of clues/bad guys coming from a mile away yet our h and detective H floundered around being annoying.
This feels like an early draft and could do with a good re-write and some serious plotting changes.