Ruby Young is slowly adjusting to her new life in Boston. A big part of that is her unexpected roommate—the ghost of the woman who lived there before. For Cordelia Graves, she may no longer be breathing, but it’s still her apartment and Ruby is the somewhat unwanted houseguest. They’re both happy they’ve managed to become friends, which is a miracle considering they struggle to communicate with each other. Cordelia even set Ruby up with her old job.
When Ruby discovers the body of a delivery guy at work, the new life she’s been building hangs in the balance. The last time Cordelia dragged Ruby into a murder investigation, it was almost two ghosts living in the apartment, not one. Determined to protect Ruby, Cordelia tries to shield her from the investigation, but Ruby has other ideas. It will take both of them working together to navigate the fine line between the dead and the living to bring a killer to light.

‘Death At The Door‘ is the second book in the series about two unusual roommates: Ruby Young, a twenty-something woman who has left home for the first time to make a life for herself in Boston and Cordelia Graves, the ghost of the previous tenant in the apartment Ruby has rented and whom only Ruby is aware of. 

I described the first book in the series, ‘A New Lease On Death‘ as a:

“…gentle entertainment. It was too low-key to be a thriller, too cosy to be horror and too simple to be a mystery AND YET it was a lot of fun to listen to. What I enjoyed most was watching a friendship grow between the naturally solitary, forty-something.-and-now-deceased, native Bostonian Cordelia and the perky, outgoing barely-twenty, first-time-ilving alone, new-to-the-city Ruby”

The same description applies to ‘Death At The Door‘. There is another murder for Ruby and Cordelia to solve, but the main interest for me was learning more about Cordelia’s life, watching Ruby finally start to be less naive and having Cordelia’s ex-con brother appear on the scene.

The mystery was quite good. I enjoyed the descriptions of the dynamics between the owners and developers in the small software company Ruby works at as a receptionist Office Manager (the job Cordelia used to do at the same company). The pacing of the story was relaxed but didn’t drag.

I like Corderlia and Ruby well enough to want to read the next book in the series. Now that they’ve solved two murders together, I think it’s time for them to look into how Cordelia ended up dead in her bathtub. I’m also keen to see what role Cordelia’s recently-released-fron- prison brother will play.

The only niggle I have is how Ruby and Cordelia communicate. Ruby can’t hear or see Cordelia unless Ruby gets very drunk. In the first book, it was amusing to see Cordelia and Ruby struggling to find a way to communicate. The idea that Ruby can’t read cursive made me smile, and the use of a fridge magnet poetry set was cute and ingenious. In this book, I got a little tired of all that. If Ruby is too lazy to learn cursive, then maybe she could buy a Scrabble set or a Ouija Board or, even better, a set of fridge magnets like THIS ONE. I hope that Olivia Blacke doesn’t persist with this in the third book.

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘Death At The Door‘. Giving Cordelia and Ruby a narrator each brings the chapters told from their points of view alive. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

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