My Broken Heart is Dead by Kane Jesse Howard is a bit of an odd book. Lynn is an aging landlord, a not very nice one at that, and is working on a few issues with her various properties when she has a heart attack and dies. Instead of staying dead she wakes up months later in the body of Bianca, a young witch who was an illegal extra tenant in one of Lynn’s properties. As Lynn, now Bianca, tries to figure out what happened she is also confronted with the fact that their town is haunted by a rather surprising number of ghosts, not all of whom are entirely benign. As Lynn traces Bianca’s footsteps and interacts with her friends and family she ends up unintentionally befriending Otto, a young man who claims something similar happened to his father. Working on solving the mystery of what happened alongside helping the various ghostly residents of their town, Lynn is forced to confront her own past and her own previous mistakes. Something that is not as easy as she was hoping it to be as she realizes that she was really not that great of a person.
This book is odd in that it seems to be about multiple different things such as realizing there are ghosts, unintentionally body snatching or body swapping, growing magical powers such as empathy and discovering who you are as a person. Honestly I would not have expected such a weird mix of things to actually work this well together but it surprisingly does and it does very well. The book ended up being pretty good but I will state that it took me a bit to get into because I really did not like the character of Lynn at the beginning of the book. She was definitely a character that had to grow on me and it took a while for that to happen. I did enjoy the story though as it was a rather fascinating romp through the random happenings of the supernatural realm and referenced a few ideas I was not familiar with. Some of them I did not feel were explained very well but they did function pretty well for the story. I will say that I was mildly shocked by the ending because it did such a good job of building up for something completely different that what it ended up being. This is not a bad thing but I was not prepared for some of that. The way everything ended up coming together was definitely unusual but rather enjoyable. Again there were some things I would have preferred to be explained a bit more but overall it was pretty decent. I am giving it 3.5 out of 5 stars.
I would classify this as urban fantasy with heavy hints of the supernatural so it would probably appeal best to those who tend to prefer that type of work. While it would probably be aimed at adults I would also consider it to be veering into the young adult age range so it could appeal to readers as young as sixteen. There aren’t really any issues that would potentially make it harder for readers as there was minimal violence and adult content though there was some colorful language at times as Lynn is rather sarcastic or sassy. It was good and if you decide to try it feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. This book was acquired through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.