THE GLASS HOUSE

Mirren Oakes has spent six years designing other people’s gardens and leaving before any of them become hers. She is specifically, professionally good at arriving in a place, reading it correctly, making it beautiful, and going. When she inherits Dunmore Conservatory — a Victorian glass-and-iron complex in the Hudson Valley from a grandfather she barely knew — she arrives with a professional brief and two notebooks.

Then she meets the head gardener who had a plan to buy it.

Ciaran Dunne has been tending Dunmore’s hundred-and-forty-year heritage seed collection for twelve years. He is correct about the northeast cross-ventilation pattern in the central palm house. He is also correct that she will disrupt it with her proposed renovation. He is not expecting her to come back two days later and say so.

Before Mirren can complete one growing season and decide — there’s a Victorian fern she identifies by crushing a leaf and smelling it; a heritage seed catalogue that has been waiting for someone to finish it; her grandfather’s journals in the writing desk she wasn’t ready to open until she was; a care log where the head gardener has been writing private observations addressed to his plants since Day 4; and a sketch of glazing bars she leaves on the potting bench and finds returned with one quiet correction. She carries that sketch in her jacket pocket for the rest of the growing season.

He replaces glass before it cracks. He has been doing this for twelve years. He has not yet applied it to himself.

She has spent six years making beautiful things for other people and leaving. He has spent twelve years being the person who keeps something irreplaceable alive — and having no one to keep it alive with. A Victorian glasshouse in one growing season is about to undo both of them.

Slow-burn cozy spice romance set across one growing season in a Victorian botanical conservatory. The kind of book you read slowly because you don’t want the season to end.

→ Romance > Small Town & Rural sits at 6.4 sales-to-comp (Hot Mainstream) with 180–420 estimated daily sales per top 20 title — Victorian conservatory is genuine whitespace in the cozy spice setting market

→ Dual-category play with Romance > Workplace (4.8 sales-to-comp, Hot Mainstream) — expert-vs-expert forced proximity qualifies authentically for both categories simultaneously

→ Expert heroine with genuine professional standing produces consistently stronger reader response than heroine-learns-from-grumpy-hero — two equals who are both right is a more differentiated grumpy/sunshine structure

→ The Wollemi pine care log and the glazing bar sketch are the most shareable cozy spice mechanics in this catalog — two story-specific objects that give readers vocabulary for BookTok before and after purchase

→ Spring botanical aesthetic peaks March–May on BookTok and Bookstagram — Victorian glass-and-iron architecture with lush fern and palm interiors is one of the most visually discoverable settings in the category

→ US print romance up 24% YTD 2025 — the Dunmore Conservatory Series maps across four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter), meaning the series is always in season for someone

TROPES:
• Grumpy / Sunshine
• Inheritance Plot
• Competing Experts (Equal Footing)
• Forced Proximity (One Growing Season)
• He Falls First
• Found Family
• Reluctant Heir
• He Replaces Glass Before It Cracks
• She Talks to the Plants
• The Sketch with His Correction

HEAT LEVEL: Open Door / Cozy Spice

Perfect for fans of: Laurie Gilmore, B.K. Borison, Sarah Adams, and Mariana Zapata