Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

Courtney, 40ish and Ruby, 20ish are roommates.  They have differences. Courtney is quiet, private, loves plants, and had an alcohol problem. Ruby is free-spirited, outgoing, desperately in need of a job, and wants to make her way in the world away from her family. And oh, yeah, Courtney is dead and Ruby is alive. Which makes it hard to communicate with each other, to say the least.

The two of them team up to try to solve the murder of the guy who lived across the hall.

The book was quite clever and part of the fun of solving the mystery of who done it was the mechanics of how they learned to work together once Ruby learned she wasn’t living alone in their apartment.

Courtney helps Ruby with some much needed hidden money as well as assisting her to find employment.

I enjoyed the interactions between the two main characters as well as the mystery itself. And the fact that the author named the deceased Courtney Graves and the 20-year-old Ruby Young was not lost on me. J

There’s clearly another book planned as there’s one overarching plot point that I kept screaming about that will hopefully be resolved in the next book.  I’m not a fan of cliffhangers and I’m glad this book was not one. Yes, there is an overarching plot to tie book two to book one but we got resolution of the mystery of how the neighbor died and who was responsible and that satisfied me.

Can’t wait for the next book as these characters are delightful and fun to read. Dark, yet fun, this is a great read.

This one gets five stars from me.

BLURB:

In this darkly funny supernatural mystery about an unlikely crime-solving duo that launches a commercial, unique, and genre-blending series, death is only the beginning.

Ruby Young’s new Boston apartment comes with all the usual perks. Windows facing the brick wall of the next-door building. Heat that barely works. A malfunctioning buzzer. Noisy neighbors. A dead body on the sidewalk outside. And of course, a ghost.

Since Cordelia Graves died in her apartment a few months ago, she’s kept up her residency, despite being bored out of her (non-tangible) skull and frustrated by her new roommate. When her across-the-hall neighbor, Jake Macintyre, is shot and killed in an apparent mugging gone wrong outside their building, Cordelia is convinced there’s more to it and is determined to bring his killer to justice.

Unfortunately, Cordelia, being dead herself, can’t solve the mystery alone. She has to enlist the help of the obnoxiously perky, living tenant of her apartment. Ruby is twenty, annoying, and has never met a houseplant she couldn’t kill. But she also can do everything Cordelia can’t, from interviewing suspects to researching Jake on the library computers that go up in a puff of smoke if Cordelia gets too close. The roommates form an unlikely friendship as they get closer to the truth about Jake’s death…and maybe other dangerous secrets as well.