Better Homes and Hauntings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Author of the beloved Half Moon Hollow series of vampire romances (Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs), Molly Harper has created a standalone paranormal romance in which a dilapidated haunted house could bring star-crossed lovers together—if it doesn’t kill them first!
When Nina Linden is hired to landscape a private island off the New England coast, she sees it as her chance to rebuild her failing business after being cheated by her unscrupulous ex. She never expects that her new client, software mogul Deacon Whitney, would see more in her than just a talented gardener. Deacon has paid top dollar to the crews he’s hired to renovate the desolate Whitney estate—he had to, because the bumps, thumps, and unexplained sightings of ghostly figures in nineteenth-century dress are driving workers away faster than he can say “Boo.”
But Nina shows no signs of being scared away, even as she experiences some unnerving apparitions herself. And as the two of them work closely together to restore the mansion’s faded glory, Deacon realizes that he’s found someone who doesn’t seem to like his fortune more than himself—while Nina may have finally found the one man she can trust with her bruised and battered heart.
But something on the island doesn’t believe in true love…and if Nina and Deacon can’t figure out how to put these angry spirits to rest, their own love doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harper (How to Run with a Naked Werewolf) puts a spectral twist on this charming but convoluted standalone paranormal. Nina Linden hopes to restore her landscaping business's failing finances by joining a team doing a complete renovation of Crane's Nest. The supposedly haunted house is the ancestral home of the wealthy Deacon Whitney, who hopes to overcome the curse dooming all members of his family to failure. Others spending the next three months on Whitney Island, R.I., include architect Jake Rumson and his onetime girlfriend, "organizational guru" Cindy Ellis. Romance slowly blooms between Nina and Deacon, and between Jake and Cindy, even as they deal with mysterious noises and ghostly interference linked to a century-old murder. Harper front-loads her story with a memorable ensemble cast and a spooky, almost claustrophobic setting, and she keeps the ball rolling with subtle yet effective chemistry, but the narrative occasionally feels unfocused and overly busy.