This book has no business being as fun as it is.
I picked it up because I needed something light after a brutal string of night shifts - three codes in two nights, a combative patient who somehow got hold of a bedpan as a weapon (don't ask), and the kind of week that makes you question every life choice except the coffee ones. I was sitting in my car in the hospital parking garage at 7:15 AM, too wired to drive home, and I figured I'd start something easy to bring my heart rate down.
Nine and a half hours later (spread across three post-shift drives and one very long Sunday while Carlos took the kids to his mom's), I was genuinely sad it was over.
A Ghostbuster With a One-Eared Pug Named Lestat
Look, the premise sounds ridiculous. Melody Bittersweet runs a ghostbusting agency in a quaint English town called Chapelwick. She sees dead people. She has an ex named Leo Dark who is basically every bad decision you ever made in your twenties but with better cheekbones. There's a one-eared pug called Lestat, a best friend named Marina, and a haunted mansion where the crockery floats and there's "the wrong kind of rhythmic pounding" at night.
It should be too much. It's not.
Kitty French walks this line between cozy and genuinely funny that most authors in this genre trip right over. The mystery itself - three ghost brothers, one murdered at twenty, a decades-old family cover-up - actually has real bones to it (pun fully intended). The question of whether the family exiled the right person kept me guessing longer than I expected, and the resolution didn't insult my intelligence. For a book with a subtitle that includes "absolutely hilarious," it earns that claim more than most.
Melody's family is bonkers in a way that felt deeply familiar to me. As the eldest of five, I know what it's like to be the responsible one surrounded by chaos you didn't create but somehow have to manage. My mom would love this - she's a sucker for a plucky heroine with a messy personal life and a good heart. (She still thinks I should've been a doctor, but she'd read this book in a day.)
Cat Gould Gets the Comedy Right
Here's the thing about narrating comedy: timing is everything. You can have the best joke in the world, but if the narrator delivers it flat or rushes the setup, it dies. Cat Gould doesn't let them die.
Her inflection work carries the humor - the way she shifts tone between Melody's internal panic and her outward composure is genuinely funny. The distinction between characters is solid. You always know who's talking, which matters in a book with this many personalities bouncing off each other. Arthur's geeky enthusiasm sounds different from Marina's ride-or-die energy, and Leo Dark gets this slightly oily charm that made me want to both slap him and hear more of him.
That said, I can see why some listeners rated the narration a bit lower. There's a specific pacing choice Gould makes during the slower middle sections - she leans into the cozy atmosphere, which is great if you're decompressing but might test your patience if you're looking for urgency. I didn't mind it. After the week I'd had, cozy was exactly what I needed. But if you're someone who needs constant momentum, bump it to 1.25x during the setup chapters and come back to normal speed when things pick up.
The emotional delivery works too. There are a couple of moments with the ghost brothers - particularly the youngest one, the murdered one - where Gould shifts from comedy to something genuinely tender without it feeling jarring. That's hard to pull off. She pulls it off.
Who This Is For (And Who Should Keep Scrolling)
If you love cozy mysteries with actual wit - not just cute, but genuinely laugh-out-loud wit - this is your book. If you liked the Stephanie Plum series for the chaos but wished there were ghosts, get in here. If you need your mysteries dark and gritty with forensic accuracy, this is not your lane, and that's okay. When I'm in that mood, I'll reach for something like Better off Dead: (Jack Reacher 26) instead.
Perfect for that post-shift decompression. Perfect for a road trip where you need something the whole car can enjoy (though the "mature themes" tag means maybe not with the kids). Perfect for when life has been too heavy and you need a book that doesn't take itself seriously but still gives you a real mystery to chew on.
I will say: it's the first in a series, and it ends in a way that makes you want to keep going. Not a cliffhanger exactly, but Melody's world is clearly just getting started. I've already got book two queued up.
Night Shift Prescription: Take As Needed
This is comfort food in audiobook form - chocolate fudge cake, appropriately enough, given the book's own description. It's not going to change your life. It's not trying to. But it's smart, it's funny, Cat Gould's comedic timing is on point, and Lestat the one-eared pug is the sidekick I didn't know I needed.
Carlos asked why I was laughing in the car at 7 AM in a parking garage. I told him a dead guy made a joke about his own murder. He just nodded. Fifteen years married to a night shift nurse - nothing phases him anymore.
