This was such a good book! The characters stay with you long after you finish the book and I loved all the twists and turns. My first time to read a book by this author but I cannot wait to read more!

Gabby has such a fun style of writing! Initially, this book gave me the spoons, then it turned into a hilarious tale of the Rooks.. a quirky family of clairvoyants, demon hunters, and even a demon. They squabble and pick on each other, but at the end of the day, fight the otherworldly beings putting the world in danger together as a family.

situational-humor, verbal-humor, laugh-riot, contemporary, ya-only-means-no-gratuitous-erotica, LGBT, family-dynamics, ghosts, ghost-hunting, urban-fantasy, snark-fest*****

The Rook family is a real olio of characters! I'm not even going to try to summarize or hit the high points because I am so LOL,LMFAO and that's the biggest takeaway from reading this hilarity. Absolutely fantastic fun!
I requested and received a free temporary ebook copy from Farrago Books via NetGalley. Thank you!

A new three book series for Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, following her highly entertaining Darkwood series. This series features the Rook family, who collectively work as ghost "cleaners", dealing with hauntings and other ghostly matters.
I really enjoyed the Darkwood series for its humour, distinctive characters and interesting story line. Wish You Weren't Here continues with all of these things. The comedy is excellently done with many laugh out load moments. The individuality of the characters is apparent right from the start, each personality is clearly drawn and the interactions of the family are superb. This book hits the ground running in terms of action and the pace doesn't flag at any point. This makes it a very quick and entertaining read.
There are many layers to the characters and glimpses of unresolved issues are hinted at throughout the story, promising more delightful revelations in remaining books in the series. I can't wait to read more.

‘A lot of really bad things have happened in Coldbay. A lot-lot.’

Brenda, a clairvoyant, is married to Richard, who has his own stuff going on. They have two adult children. Darryl, also clairvoyant, loves his husband, Janusz. Charity, the human Ghostbuster trap, loves carbs. Janusz, who was once upon a time a client of the Rooks, loves spreadsheets as much as he loves his husband. Together the Rooks run a ghost hunting business.

“Clients contacted the Rooks because their kids were talking backwards or their cutlery kept flying at them or their walls were bleeding and they really quite wanted it to stop.”

The Rooks’ newest client is Coldbay Island’s local priest. They might have to do a little overtime on this job and that’s going to seriously mess with Janusz’s spreadsheet.

‘Here we are, and it’s positively crawling with ghosts.’

I enjoyed this book and will be continuing the series. However, fair or not, I couldn’t help comparing it to the Darkwood series, which I absolutely adored.

I loved all of the characters in Darkwood but I mostly just loved Janusz in this book. There was some humour in this book but, unlike Darkwood, my face doesn’t hurt from smiling almost the entire time I was reading. There was no Bin Night equivalent on Coldbay Island.

I would happily pass the Darkwood series along to a child. I wouldn’t do that with this book, if only because of the swearing.

I originally hoped for a sneaky Darkwood crossover, maybe with Trevor or perhaps a character more appropriate for this story like Patience. Until I saw Charity in action. Then I was glad Patience stayed in Myrsina.

Maybe it’s because I’m almost two months into lockdown here in Australia but a lot of what I’m reading at the moment reminds me of other things I’ve read or movies I’ve seen.

Something that happened to Janusz reminded me of one of my favourite scenes in Roald Dahl’s The Witches. The Rooks’ website’s “No spectral problem too big or too small” brought to mind Venkman’s “No job is too big, no fee is too big”. When the Rooks faced up against this book’s Big Bad, I couldn’t help thinking they could potentially solve all of their problems if they sourced some of the pink slime from Ghostbusters II, smeared it all over whatever the English equivalent of the Statue of Liberty is and sing happy songs to it.

There’s plenty of action in this book. The Rook family quickly became real to me and I’m keen to find out how individual family members are going to deal with the information that came to light while they were at Coldbay Island. This story doesn’t officially end on a cliffhanger but there are plenty of threads to tie together during the rest of the series.

Content warnings include alcoholism and mention of death by suicide, immolation and miscarriage.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Farrago, an imprint of Duckworth Books, for the opportunity to read this book.

Wish You Weren’t Here is a funny, irreverent, and utterly enjoyable story about the Rook’s, a family of ghost hunters. I would describe it as a ghost buster vibe, but set in the seaside island of Coldbay. Also, the family use only their own natural abilities to see and move the ghosts along. No fancy equipment here. I enjoyed the family dynamics, especially with the addition of Murzzz and Janusz.. No matter how grim things seemed to get, the banter between this group kept the story humorous. The book is a quick read. The author has made this a group of quite flawed family and the individual issues and sibling jabs felt quite real.

This a fun book and I don’t think it takes itself too seriously. For me it was tone perfect. I hope this becomes a series because I would love to read more.

Thank you Netgalley and Farrago for the eArc

A quick read with an interesting premise. There was so much action I got a bit bored reading the descriptions of fighting. And the family bickering was off-putting rather than fun. Love the Polish husband, though!

I didn't like it as much as the author's Darkwood series, but I am always more of fairytale girl. But it wasn't a bad book, it was a pure action, with a lot of fun. So if you are looking for something for a lazy evening, this is definitely your thing. Also, it shiows a great promise for next installments. I will continue with the series.

4 stars

Rating: 3.1/5

This won't appeal to everyone. In fact, I strongly suspect that this could divide readers into two distinct camps of those who like it, and those who really, really dislike it. I doubt there will be too many occupying the middle ground.

I was attracted to this after reading the synopsis. It put me in mind of the way I felt when I read the sleeve notes for Jasper Fforde's "The Big Over Easy", which was so wonderfully silly that I found myself audibly chuckling in the book shop. I simply had to buy it. I took it home - loved it - and since then I have read and enjoyed everything by Jasper Fforde. Would "Wish You Weren't Here" mark the beginning of a similar relationship with Gabby Hutchinson Crouch?

Well, for the first quarter of the book I was convinced that it wouldn't: It was all a bit bizarre - but then I had expected it to be from reading the synopsis. It was also intelligently written with humorous touches that were sometimes twisted, sometimes clever and sometimes just plain silly, but in an endearing fashion. However, in spite of all that, I was struggling to feel fully engaged with it.

I don't think it helped that, although this is the first book in a planned trilogy, the early sections are written in a way that feels as though you are joining part way through an existing series. It is only as you progress further into the book that author begins to slide information into the narrative that allows the reader to piece the backstory together. Providing you haven't already given up the ghost (pun fully intended!) by this stage, the reading process does begin to become much more satisfying.

Wish you weren't here? Not at all. By the time I had finished the book I can happily report that, on the whole, I enjoyed the experience - though I am still in two minds as to whether I engaged with the Rook family sufficiently to compel me to join them again on their other forthcoming adventures. Time will tell.

I requested a pre-release copy from Netgalley for review because I'd enjoyed one of the author's other books. I didn't particularly enjoy this one, though.

It falls into the "Britain is so grey and depressing, ha ha, the weather is completely crap, ha ha, and the bureaucracy and just society in general makes you want to kill yourself, isn't that hilarious?" school of British black comedy, which is not my favourite by a long way. The central family is dysfunctional; Brenda, the mother, is rude and controlling and engages in maladaptive coping using alcohol, without any real compensating virtues, and her husband is one of those people who is always smoothing things over because their partner is awful but he doesn't want a scene. Their son is moody and ineffectual, their adoptive daughter dramatic and snarky, and the only person I would want to spend any time with is the son's husband, who is, in many ways, the true hero of the group, despite having no supernatural abilities.

Rather than satisfactorily resolving the situation, the ending just leads on to the next book. It's not a cliffhanger, strictly speaking, but I certainly didn't find it satisfying and complete in itself. I won't be reading future books in the series.

There's some talent here. I was engaged enough to keep reading to the end. The humour is, though too dark for my taste, still genuinely funny at times. But it just wasn't the book for me.

Gabby Hutchinson Crouch wrote the stupendous Darkwood trilogy –the best fantasy books I have read since Terry Pratchett passed away. She’s now started a new trilogy about the Rooks family. They’re cleaners – they clean up ghosts. Mum Brenda and son Darryl have the gift of seeing ghosts whilst adopted daughter Charity can “move them on”. The Rev Grace Barry has emailed them, asking for help at her church on Coldbay Island so the family drive out, expecting a routine despatching of a docile ghost or two. What they find is not a docile ghost. It may or may not be the start of the apocalypse – oh, dear! Darryl’s husband, Janusz, points out that his spreadsheets haven’t allowed for a big job like this.

I loved Darkwood: I thought it was very witty as well as incredibly funny. I’m afraid Wish You Weren’t Here didn’t have the same impact upon me. There weren’t the puns and the resonances with literature that permeated the three Darkwood books and gave so much depth to them. I felt Brenda was really irritating and I actively disliked her. I didn’t empathise with any of the other characters and I didn’t really care what happened to them. You may well feel differently!


#WishYouWerentHere #NetGalley