Hikikomori

The cover proclaims this to be “The Sixth Sense speed-written by Chuck Palahniuck”, which gives it some pretty big shoes to fill.

Lawrence Pearce manages to fill them. Hikikomori is a Japanese term for people who are extremely reclusive and isolate themselves from society, rarely if ever leaving the house, and Pearce tells the story of a British Hikomori; Jared, a young man who is despondent after his fiancee Sarah is killed in a mugging, and who retreats from the world to find an imaginary girlfriend in his apartment. Someone that he can be with without being hurt.

As the same time, Hikikomori is the story of Melissa, a young woman with a history of Disassociative disorder who moves to a furnished flat in London, only to find it haunted by a ghost, who pines for his lost fiancee Sarah.

These two realities are introduced separately, but overlap, with only one of them being real - and the deftfully-told story keeps it ambiguous, so you're not sure who is real, or who is alive.

Hikikomori is a ghost story, but also a story about loneliness, and isolation, and how easy it would be, in the modern world, to become a ghost - you don't even need to die to become one.