The Ghost of Us: A Standalone Emotional Small-Town Ghost Romance (Crescent Falls Book 1)

He picked up a hitchhiker on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Then he noticed she didn't have a shadow.

Ethan Cole has nothing left. Two years after losing his wife, he has sold everything, quit his career as an architect, and is driving Highway 101 with no destination and a letter in his glove compartment he hopes no one ever has to read.

Then he meets Lila.

She is standing on the highway shoulder in a burgundy sundress bright, stubborn, and completely lost. She doesn't know where she's going. She doesn't know where she came from. But she has three rules for their road trip: she picks the music, they stop at every interesting place, and absolutely no sulking.

There is just one problem.

Lila cannot eat. She cannot touch anything. She does not cast a shadow. And no one can hear her voice but him.

As their road trip becomes a mystery and the mystery becomes a love story Ethan discovers that Lila is not a ghost at all. She is a woman in a coma in a Portland hospital, trapped somewhere between life and death, with a husband at her bedside counting down the days until he can let her die for the inheritance.

The clock on her life is already running. He has the only voice she can speak through.

And the man who arrived at the Oregon coast with nothing left to live for is, against every instinct he has, falling in love with the one person he can never touch.

The Ghost of Us is a sweeping, heart-wrenching paranormal romance about grief, second chances, and the impossible distance between two people who can see each other but cannot reach across it. For readers who loved The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston, and If I Stay by Gayle Forman and for anyone who has ever loved someone they couldn't keep.

A road trip. A ghost. A ticking clock. One impossible love.

Readers will love:

- A swoon-worthy almost-touch slow burn
- A grumpy/sunshine pairing with real emotional weight
- An Oregon coast road trip with diner pie and bad indie folk
- Found family, sisters who show up, and a small-town diner owner who knows more than he says
- A guaranteed happily-ever-after. Bring tissues, but trust the landing no cliffhanger, no cheating.

Content note: This book contains depictions of grief and loss handled with care. A full content note and resources appear in the front matter.