Ghost sex vs human sex

I have had Gabriel's Ghost in my TBR pile forever. I heard it was great, but somehow, I couldn't get past the cover. Not only did it make me think the book was a romance with a ghost, but with a SUPER DORKY-LOOKING ghost. (He's sort of hard to see in the picture, but obviously, the humanoid on the right.)

Like, if you name your book Gabriel’s Ghost, and then you have a ghostly dork-ghost on the cover, and then the blurb says, “A life and death battle where giving up the ghost has a whole new meaning.” And then the lead is actually called “a ghost from her past” on the back,” well, how can you blame a girl for drawing such conclusions?

So I was relieved to find that Gabriel is NOT a ghost. Now, I just started it, so I suppose he COULD become a ghost, but the ghostly image on the cover is a different character. Phew!

**spoiler**

I wasn’t up for another ghost-human romance after my traumatic experience with Lover Unbound. I’ll review it at some point, but yow, I loved that sex scene in the bathroom between Vishous and Jane. It was my favorite Ward sex scene since the first book with Wrath and Beth. However, the instant Jane became a ghost, I was no longer interested in her relationship or her sex life, even though there was nothing technically different about her when she was with V. I was thinking, why is that not good enough? Why am I not interested in a romance with a ghost if the ghost is corporeal enough to have sex, and has almost a normal life, except for being a ghost most of the time? I don’t really have an answer. But after that scene at the dinner table where she was just empty clothes, she ceased to count for me. Maybe part of the excitement of romance is who the person is in the world. Maybe it’s something about balance, or polarization between people. Because if I really liked a guy, and then you told me, ‘Hey Carolyn, when he is not around you, he is a ghost!’ I think I wouldn’t like the guy anymore. It’s funny how many clichés come to mind as I write this— non-entity, doesn’t hold water, no substance. Maybe those cliches have a root in the way humans are hardwired, who knows.