After watching a few episodes of the 1960s television adaptation of The Ghost and Mrs Muir - for Edward Mulhare as Captain Gregg, I must admit - I looked up the original novel by R A Dick (Josephine Leslie). However, the paperback is £12 on Amazon while this retelling was free with Kindle Unlimited - a no-brainer, I thought!

Until I read the author's notes, my main question while reading was - why? Even from the handful of episodes I watched, I could tell that the author was sticking close to the original format, whether the novel or the film version with Rex Harrison. What did this 'retelling' have to offer? Apparently, the author wished for a more traditional fulfilment of the relationship between Lucy Muir and Captain Gregg (or Adele and Captain Daniels, in her version) but hates the current trend in paranormal romances (I'll have to take her word for this) of giving the ghostly love interest a temporary corporeal form solely for sex scenes! So she hit on reincarnation as the way to unite the ghost and Mrs Muir. The same strong bond exists between the two - in fact, Adele and the Captain are the only two characters written with any depth, surrounded by mere pencil sketches and clichés - but Adele can only hear and talk to her ghostly love interest for most of the story, apart from a couple of trippy dreams. The author's solution to this posthumous partnership does work on a technical level but also feels tacked on.

My main issue is that the narrative is both plodding and erratic. I enjoyed the initial banter between Adele and the Captain while she was moving into his cliffside house - which I recognised from the series - but then there is a whole tedious subplot with a fake spiritualist and shifty love interest who convinces nobody but Adele (certainly not the reader!) She is then committed by her late husband's mother for talking to herself - Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) covered this schtick years ago! - and is forced to give up the Captain or lose her freedom and her two children. As the author admits, however, locking up independent or 'radical' women was more a nineteenth century punishment while this story is set in the early years of the twentieth century. After she 'recovers' and is released, Adele instantly gets into the most unlikely accident to force the spirit of the Captain to rescue her in physical form, all in the last few chapters. The pacing shifts from glacial to warp speed and then the story is over.

A pleasant and philosophical read for a Sunday afternoon but now all I really want to do is read the original novel! ( )