The Boo Next Door

I came home to save my grandmother’s house. I declared war on the neighbor instead.

Lila Merriweather builds monsters for a living — or did, until the theme park “sunsetted” her whole department. Now she’s back in Hollow Creek with a leaking roof, a judgmental cat, and one shot at the $10,000 prize in the town’s legendary Halloween decorating contest. The contest her grandmother won twelve years running.

The only thing standing between Lila and the Golden Gourd is Grady Ellis: volunteer firefighter, three-time champion, owner of a two-story animatronic dragon and the most infuriating shoulders in New England. He rescues cats. He coaches youth soccer. He posed her own skeletons into the words GIVE UP.

It’s war. It’s extension-cord theft and fog-machine sabotage and a meddling committee that sentences them to build the kids’ Haunted Walk together. It’s a nor’easter, one tiny shed, and a kiss that changes absolutely nothing, she’ll destroy him anyway, on the merits.

But Grady is keeping a secret in his garage — forty-one secrets, actually, and a letter with her grandmother’s handwriting on it — and when it all comes out on Devil’s Night, Lila has one day to decide what Halloween is actually for.

A steamy, laugh-out-loud enemies-to-lovers novella about grief, gourds, competitive decorating, and coming home. Standalone. HEA guaranteed. Cat approves.