The past and other stories that should stay buried

Author: Shaun David Hutchison
Genre: Contemporary, Urban Fantasy
Original publication date: February 2019
Book description: Dino doesn’t mind spending time with the dead. His parents own a funeral home, and death is literally the family business. He’s just not used to them talking back. Until Dino’s ex-best friend July dies suddenly—and then comes back to life. Except not exactly. Somehow July is not quite alive, and not quite dead.
As Dino and July attempt to figure out what’s happening, they must also confront why and how their friendship ended so badly, and what they have left to understand about themselves, each other, and all those grand mysteries of life.

Thoughts:
I was very close to DNFing this book on several occasions. If I had not been reading it in audio I would not have even gotten to 50%
Why?
It felt like too angsty and teenagy. It does fit the age the main characters are supposed to be. They are high schoolers who face a situation that defies the laws of nature and instead of acting mature they are focusing on petty things and just go back and forth throwing blame on to one another for things in the past.
It has a lot of miscommunication be it between friends, love interest. 
MY main issue is July, she is a very selfish girl who does not accept her faults and treats her supposed best friend awful and doesn't realize it until other people call her out on it and still she feels offended and does not get that she has been behaving wrong.

We get a lovely boy - boy love story, it feels very realistic and yet not. Dino is not sure about his feelings like his seemly perfect boyfriend is, he makes mistakes but you know normal.

We have a very good family dynamic, it feels very realistic. The family just naturally has expectations about certain member's future, that is normal and it happens mainly in big families that are close to their extended family members. I really like how they are reflected and how Dino has huge struggles to literally speak up on his own wishes when they do not match what everyone in his family expects from him.

There is a lot of character development, in Dino, July, their respective families a bit as well. So overall it was ok. But I will not be rereading this and can't really say this is a story is something I enjoy my time during reading it. 
When I finished I saw how it was important for the story to progress the way it went, so it feels better once we are through.

Overall it was a mixed feeling about it.

This is a book that was not definitely part of my initial TBR and definitely did not plan on reading it at all but it was an available audiobook in Scribd so I picked it up simply on a whim.