Shelly Jay Shore’s debut nov­el, Rules for Ghost­ing, is a sto­ry filled with love, fam­i­ly dra­ma, and a healthy dose of Jew­ish joy. Ezra Fried­man start­ed see­ing ghosts after his grand­fa­ther died, which was a big rea­son he ran away from the family’s funer­al home busi­ness. When we meet Ezra, he’s just been fur­loughed from his job and has had to move into a new apart­ment with new room­mates. Then, at his family’s Passover seder, his moth­er announces that she’s leav­ing his father for the rabbi’s wife. Noth­ing in Ezra’s life is nor­mal, and he’s put in the uncom­fort­able posi­tion of work­ing in the funer­al home with the ghosts.

Amid all this fam­i­ly dra­ma, Ezra meets Jonathan, his neigh­bor and a vol­un­teer at the funer­al home., He also meets the ghost of Ben, Jonathan’s late hus­band. Ben’s ghost can speak, and he des­per­ate­ly wants Jonathan to heal and live a full life. Ezra is more than ready to help with that.

Ezra’s abil­i­ty to see the ghosts of oth­er peo­ple is often more com­fort­ing than scary, embody­ing the bless­ing of their mem­o­ry. When Ezra meets Ben, he is pushed to lim­its that he’s nev­er had to face before, and he allows him­self to open his heart and let oth­ers care for and love him. His fam­i­ly dynam­ic is an impor­tant dri­ver of the sto­ry. Ezra and his sib­lings, Aaron and Bec­ca, share a tight bond that grows even tighter as their par­ents face the unknown— nav­i­gat­ing a world apart from each oth­er. Inter­wo­ven through it all are beau­ti­ful scenes of Jew­ish hol­i­days mixed with a lit­tle chaos and expla­na­tions of the Jew­ish rit­u­als around death and burial.

Filled with con­flict but lay­ered with grace for loved ones, Rules for Ghost­ing is as much a romance as an adult com­ing-of-age sto­ry, writ­ten with a sweet tenderness.