HALF A HAUNTED HOUSE

Clem Darrow built her career making other people’s events work. She can sweet-talk a vendor who’s threatening to walk, rebuild a timeline forty-eight hours before opening night, and keep her face perfectly neutral when a client changes everything at the last minute. She is very good at managing other people’s visions.

Then a lawyer calls about a consulting opportunity, and she walks out of his office co-owner of a failing haunted attraction in a small Connecticut town — alongside a man named Wes Dunmore who has six years of opinions about scare architecture and zero interest in her ideas about modernization.

Before Clem can get a single fog machine in the right place, there’s a property that keeps rearranging itself when no one’s looking, a former scare actor who bakes at 11pm and won’t explain it, a beloved old crew that was clearly expecting both of them, thirty-one October nights that do something to a person when they’re spent in the dark with someone who’s also paying attention, and the growing suspicion that the man who left them this mess — who built something extraordinary over twenty-two years and then put it in the hands of two strangers — knew exactly what he was doing.

She’s spent her entire career executing other people’s visions because fighting for her own felt too much like asking for something. He’s spent six years in the same house, protecting the same rooms, because staying still felt like loyalty and was actually something else. One month in a Victorian haunted attraction in October is about to make both of those positions very hard to hold.

Spooky-cozy Halloween rivals-to-lovers romance where the pranks are someone’s love letter, the house has been waiting, and the grumpy one bakes. The kind of book you start on October 1st and finish at midnight on Halloween because you had to know if they saved it.

WHY THIS WILL SELL

→ Romance > Holidays & Seasonal > Halloween sits at 8.1 sales-to-comp (Hot Niche) with 55–70 estimated daily sales per top 20 title — and the spooky-cozy lane (Halloween atmosphere, no actual horror) is nearly empty of direct competition at the Romantic Comedy register

→ Dual-category play with Romance > Romantic Comedy (7.4 sales-to-comp, Hot Mainstream) means legitimate placement in two high-volume categories simultaneously — a reader who finds it through rom-com is a new buyer for the Halloween list

→ Co-owners + rivals-to-lovers + ticking-clock inheritance is one of the most social-share-optimized trope stacks in contemporary romance — eliminates “why don’t they just leave,” forces proximity and collaboration, and gives the countdown timeline a structural reason to exist

→ September 15–October 1 release captures peak Halloween romance purchase window — seasonal buyers peak 2–4 weeks before the holiday; this book’s October 1–31 internal timeline mirrors the reader’s real calendar

→ Found-family ensemble with four seeded future protagonists gives the buyer a series platform with natural read-through hooks — Blackthorn Hall is a world readers will want to return to, and Ruby, Frank, Millie, and Pete each have a story ready to build

→ The haunted attraction setting is niche and passionate — the regional haunt community has an active social presence and will champion an authentically-researched romance set in their world

TROPES:
• Co-owners rivals romance
• Rivals to lovers
• Grumpy/sunshine
• Inheritance with conditions
• Forced proximity
• Spooky-cozy
• Found family
• Halloween countdown
• Reluctant partners
• Baking as emotional communication
• Dead man’s matchmaking
• The house knows
• Props as love letters
• Crew becomes family

HEAT LEVEL: Sweet / Closed Door — all the longing and the midnight kitchens and the almost-touches; the kiss earns thirty chapters; nothing goes further than that on the page; heat-flagged throughout for Dial the Heat™ upgrade at any level

Perfect for fans of: Lucy Score, Christina Lauren, Lyla Sage, Emily Henry