SEEING OTHER PEOPLE

Morgan has been a nomad all her adult life, haunted by past failures and seeking new places to escape them by taking landscaping jobs around the country. But being followed by the ghost of Zach, a one-time hookup, is a new experience even for her. Then she meets Sawyer, who’s been mourning his fiancée, Kennedy, and clinging to her ghost in the house in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood they’d planned to redesign together. In trying to free both their ethereal companions and themselves, Morgan and Sawyer agree to work together. Sawyer will let Morgan stay in the studio attached to his haunted house and help her figure out her ex’s unfulfilled wishes so Zach’s ghost can pass on; Morgan will landscape the garden Sawyer planned to create with his fiancée so Kennedy’s spirit can be at peace. As they crisscross Los Angeles in their quixotic quest, Sawyer starts to develop feelings for the free-spirited Morgan even as he fears losing his tie to a happy past. Morgan, meanwhile, is thinking of putting down roots, drawn to Sawyer as he puts himself back together. For a new love to grow, both need to conquer their fear of loss. Despite long meditations on death and grief, the novel has some funny moments, thanks to Zach, who used to be a surfer. The third act breakup and subsequent resolution bogs down the narrative’s early momentum and could have used some pruning. The L.A. setting is integral to the plot, serving almost as a character; the location and its careful use in the narrative feel like a rarity in contemporary romance at the moment.