Murder by Death

A re-read of an oldie but goodie I found when I was re-organising my bookshelves, Long Time Coming is a difficult book to categorise.  There's definitely a ghost, and there's definitely a romance, although it's a very slow moving one.  There's sort of a mystery (which I believe is how I found this book originally, it was mis-shelved), but it's more of an after-thought; kind of wedged in to give the ghost a bigger part.

Eighteen years is a long time to stay away from home. But when Joy Hudson left Kentucky, she was running from memories of one tragic night. Now family duties have forced her to return and make a new start in the town she thought she'd left behind forever.  ...she must let go of the sorrow from the long-ago accident that killed her best friend.  And Jeff Bradford, the teenager she's blamed for the accident and now the handsome doctor caring for her father...

Most of this book is about Joy trying to release the repressed memories of what happened right before and after her best friend died, and try to understand why she was unable to grieve for her friend in a healthier way.  It's a good read and my type of romance: the kind with really no romancing.  But great characters, very solid writing and an engaging story that kept me reading.  The final hurdle between Joy and Jeff fell rather abruptly - if I were Jeff, I'd be wanting an explanation, but it was a small detail in an otherwise very believable story (or as believable as a ghost story can be).