- Moira

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“I said, ‘No!’” Emily repeated, finally turning on the light beside the bed she shared with her fiance. “We are not having ghosts in the house. I don’t care if it’s tradition. I’m not doing it!”

Funny start. Excellent. A tradition of ghosts is a terrific hook. You could cut the phrase "finally..." or move it until after the hook statement.

Michael Nguyen sighed. The argument had begun somewhere between brushing their teeth and saying good night, and from the way Emily’s face was flushed and way her eyebrows were furrowed, he could see that this fight was going to be a long, miserable one. “My parents are begging me, hon. Besides, they’re not ghosts, they’re ancestors. More importantly, they’re family. It doesn’t matter to us that they happen to be dead. I mean you don’t think of your Aunt Kitty as a ghost, do you?”

Now it is beginning to sound too conventional, and loses the humor a bit. Made me think "Oh, I wasn't supposed to laugh". Was I?

In fact, Emily did think of Aunt Kitty as a ghost.

Now we have shifted to Emily's POV. That change is distracting enough for me to go "o-oh". Overall, a great start, if it is to be funny. Otherwise, I will feel let down.

Of course, that could be the ultimate living-with-the-inlaws sitcom. Ghosts often make for dark fantasy or horror, though. These first 13 lines have a light tone (and the flushed face made me think they'd done more than brush teeth.)

The characters and conflict are introduced as well as the genre and the lightness of the story. In two readings, I don't find any nits, but others will. I thought at first that Michael's full name was a bit formal for the tone, but then the ancestral stuff is cultural so the name is needed to establish family cultural background in the story.

My main thing was I didn't like the opening line. In general, stories that start with dialogue feel startling to me, and to have dialoge within dialogue (Emily quoting herself) felt doubly aggressive.

Really, my only nit-picky thing was the repetition in "the way" which didn't work for me:

>from the way Emily’s face was flushed and way her eyebrows were furrowed

Is it aimed to be 'comedy' genre? The problem there is that people want lots of joke (note people wanting more than two jokes in 13 lines) might be better to have a fantasy with comedy, than comedy with fantasy.

One of the things I have noted about 'comedy' as such, is that sometimes the joke can't stretch too far (some Terry Pratchett books I found were too long for the joke) but when done well it is great.

I like the tone and the voice of this, and I'm hooked and continuing to read. Other than the POV shift that has already been mentioned, I did notice a couple other technical areas that could be improved.

"...and from the way Emily’s face was flushed and way her eyebrows were furrowed..." This long description kind of knocks us out of the rhythm of your words. This sentence is already long enough with between brushing their teeth and saying goodnight, which in itself sets a tone and speaks to the domestic habits of your MC's. The bit about Emily's face could be reworded to be a little more economical.

"It doesn’t matter to us that they happen to be dead." This is a little redundant, and in an actual argument, I don't know that this point would be reinforced quite so much. We're discussing ghosts here - if the reader can't reason out on their own that we're talking about the spirits of dead people, perhaps they need to go back to reading some Scooby Doo to learn the difference between a real ghost (the spirit of a dead person) and a fake ghost (creepy old Mr. Sanders who lives down at the abandoned carnival grounds and is trying to scare all the kids away).

Very very good, though. I like this.