Come Back and Haunt Me by Kim Catanzarite

An uneasy portrait of grief and the unsettling persistence of love

“‘Ghosts, I discovered, were more emotional than living humans.’”

What do you do when the person you love becomes impossible to recognize? In Kim Catanzarite’s Come Back and Haunt Me, Veka is forced to confront that question after her fiancé Brady’s death, when his spirit begins haunting her in hopes that she can save him from Hell. 

Catanzarite deliberately blurs the line between romance and discomfort from the moment Veka and Brady meet. Their first encounter has the structure of a meet-cute, only Brady arrives at the animal shelter carrying his sister’s dead puppy after it has been struck by a car. The moment is tragic rather than charming, yet from the start, both know they’re going to end up together. Their relationship feels inevitable, defined by an awkwardness that is strangely intimate. 

It’s a romance cliché that opposites attract, something that Veka and Brady don’t escape from. Veka even acknowledges it early in their relationship. She likes that she’s careful and self-conscious where Brady is restless and impulsive, drifting between responsibilities with an ease that she envies and fears. 

But as the novel progresses, it’s Veka who leaves the strongest impression. Self-deprecating yet honest, she continually psychoanalyzes herself and her relationship, fully aware of Brady’s instability even as she romanticizes it. Much of the novel’s emotional tension comes from seeing Veka struggle to reconcile the person she loves with the increasingly immature and possessive man Brady reveals himself to be.

Unlike most relationships, however, Veka and Brady’s unraveling occurs after his sudden death. The novel slowly shifts away from romance and toward the uneasy reality of unhealthy attachment, exacerbated by grief and rage on both sides. For Veka, there is no real escape, as Brady haunts her both literally and figuratively. There’s something genuinely unsettling about how claustrophobic their relationship becomes, to the point that Veka’s work becomes her only reprieve from him. Catanzarite further underlines that dread through grotesque imagery, especially when Veka dreams of the other side. 

Come Back and Haunt Me thrives as it leans into emotional discomfort. Catanzarite is less interested in idealized love than in the emotions that are often inherent to it: resentment, insecurity, dependency, and the desire to feel chosen by another person. Even when the novel stumbles with its tone, there’s something moving about its intensity. It’s an intimate, uncomfortably recognizable novel; it isn’t a story about love but instead a powerful depiction of relationships and what believing someone is your soulmate truly means. For Veka, love is never a question of morality but inevitability. 

That contradiction reflects the novel itself. Come Back and Haunt Me is perceptive and frustrating, blending sharp emotional insight with dialogue that often has a melodramatic tinge. Brady, too, is a challenging character, especially one intended to be the male lead. He is emotionally volatile and terribly immature, often showing a lack of growth that borders on stagnancy. But the story itself is spared from becoming stagnant, as Veka’s narrative carries the story forward through its unevenness. She’s introspective even when it’s difficult to be; something highlighted by the use of first person. 

Come Back and Haunt Me is a moving story about how difficult it can be to separate love from attachment, especially when grief is woven between. Brady may haunt Veka, but the novel’s most unsettling idea is that part of her still wants him to.