Unfinished Business: An Angela Panther Novel by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson

Angela Panther has just lost her mother Fran after a long illness. She hasn't even had time to start processing her grief when- surprise!- her mother starts revealing herself to her as a spirit. After she reluctantly accepts that she isn't going crazy, Angela wants to know why her mother hasn't gone onto "the light". Fran is as hot a ticket in death as she was in life, but there are some rules even she can't break, and all she can reveal is that it's "Unfinished Business". (Is that just a new version of "you'll understand when you're older?")

Thank goodness for her supportive (and mildly sex-crazed) best friend Mel and her skeptical but hot husband Jake; she needs all the support she can get as she tries to uncode the "unfinished business", starts seeing ghosts everywhere she goes and, oh yeah, deals with her children, one of whom is going through teenage angst and the other of whom just might have something in common with his mother. Does Fran's "unfinished business" have anything to do with them? With all of this going on around her, is Angela ever going to have a normal life again?

As funny as Mel is, Angela's spoken and unspoken sarcasm made me laugh even more. I also teared up several times. Not to give anything away, but this book makes it hard to decide whether it's harder to be a parent or a child, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing harder than being both.

This isn't all ghosts, spirits, celestial beings and well-dressed psychics; there are some very serious issues presented, and even more importantly, the question of what the everyperson should do about them. It's a question Angela struggles with every time a spirit presents itself, and hopefully it's one the reader will contemplate too.

Recommended for fans of chicklit and paranormal.