Quick Take
- Narration: Joel Leslie handles the dual first-person present-tense perspectives of Tommy and Nick with enough distinction to make the format work, a technically demanding job done cleanly across 10 hours.
- Themes: Grief and letting go, anonymous connection, queer rural summer romance
- Mood: Bittersweet and slow-building, with warmth that accumulates gradually
- Verdict: A patient, well-developed MM YA romance that earns its emotional payoff for listeners willing to give it time to unfold.
I was halfway through a quiet Wednesday evening when I came to Ghosting You, Alexander C. Eberhart’s novel, and I had the same experience several reviewers describe: the beginning is slow enough that I was genuinely uncertain whether I was going to commit to it. Then somewhere around the second or third chapter, I realized I had stopped looking at the runtime tracker, which is always the sign that a book has caught me.
The premise is one of those ideas that sounds too precious to work and then turns out to work precisely because Eberhart refuses to sentimentalize it. Tommy can still hear his dead best friend Chase. They talk every day. Tommy sends him texts that fail to send until one day, one does not fail. Someone texts back. That person is Nick, a city kid stranded in rural Georgia for the summer with a borrowed phone number. What begins as a strange correspondence becomes something more complicated than either of them anticipated.
Our Take on Ghosting You
What distinguishes this book from a less careful version of the same premise is how Eberhart handles Tommy’s grief. Chase is not a device. He is a specific person who mattered to a specific other person, and Tommy’s inability to release that relationship is not pathologized or treated as something that simply needs the right love interest to overcome. Nick understands, eventually, that he is working around a real presence rather than a simple obstacle. The love triangle with a ghost is as emotionally honest as it sounds unconventional.
Nick’s perspective offers welcome counterweight. He is confident in ways Tommy is not, from a different class background, and stuck somewhere he does not want to be. Eberhart writes him with enough specificity that he is never just the foil who arrives to save the grief-stricken small-town boy. One reviewer noticed certain structural patterns across Eberhart’s books, with the two leads fitting recognizable archetypes, and that observation is accurate enough. But archetype handled well is not a flaw.
Why Listen to Ghosting You
Joel Leslie is one of the more reliable narrators working in MM audiobooks, and his handling of dual first-person present tense here is technically impressive. Present tense in audio can feel relentless, like being unable to step back from the moment. Leslie modulates it so that Tommy’s chapters carry a different emotional weight than Nick’s without the format becoming gimmicky. The 10-hour-and-13-minute runtime is full but justified. Eberhart builds character through accumulation, and Leslie honors that approach by not rushing the quieter sections.
The rural Georgia setting gives the summer sections a particular atmosphere that Leslie renders with appropriate restraint. He does not exaggerate regional affect, which is exactly right. These are real places and real people, not backdrop and archetypes.
What to Watch For in Ghosting You
The pacing is genuinely slow at the start, and multiple reviewers have flagged this. One says the book begins slowly but eventually becomes a wonderful story. Another says it took a while to get into it before committing fully. If you are someone who gives audiobooks 30 minutes to earn your attention, this is a book that may need closer to 90. The investment is worth it, but the investment is real.
The anonymous stranger dynamic, where Tommy knows Nick only through texts for much of the story, creates dramatic irony that depends on the listener knowing more than the characters. Eberhart uses this well but it requires patience with characters who are, by design, not fully seeing each other.
Who Should Listen to Ghosting You
This suits listeners who enjoy MM YA with genuine emotional substance rather than surface-level cute romance. The grief element is present throughout and is handled with seriousness. If you have read and enjoyed other Eberhart titles, this is consistent with his approach to character: careful, layered, occasionally slow to arrive at the emotional climax but credible when it gets there. Skip it if you need your romances to get going quickly. Come to it if you want a love story that has been thought about deeply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Ghosting You connected to Alexander Eberhart’s other books, or is it a standalone?
It is a standalone novel. Reviewers reference it as one of several Eberhart MM YA novels they have read, with titles like Lock and Key mentioned, but there are no shared characters or connected plots. You can come to this one without any prior Eberhart reading.
How does Joel Leslie handle the ghosting and texting premise in audio format, given that texts are a visual medium?
Leslie distinguishes the text exchanges by shifting register and cadence, giving the anonymous correspondence a different quality than the in-person scenes. The convention works better than one might expect because the anonymity of the texts is emotional rather than visual: what matters is that Tommy does not know who he is talking to, and that uncertainty translates clearly in the narration.
Is Chase, the dead best friend, an actual supernatural presence in this story or a metaphor for grief?
The book is deliberately ambiguous on this point. Tommy hears Chase’s voice, but whether this is genuine communication or a manifestation of unresolved grief is left open. Eberhart does not resolve the supernatural question definitively, which allows the story to function as both literal ghost story and grief narrative simultaneously.
Does the dual first-person present-tense narration become confusing across a 10-hour audiobook?
Joel Leslie’s narration keeps the two perspectives distinct enough that confusion is rarely an issue. Chapter breaks are clearly delineated, and Tommy and Nick have sufficiently different voices and circumstances that the shifts in point of view register quickly. A few reviewers mention the format as something they were uncertain about initially but found workable in practice.
