The Guest Book
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jun 2, 2026
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A romance on an epic, generation-spanning scale, Mae Marvel’s The Guest Book delivers the authors’ signature heart, sapphic steam, and humor in a book you’ll curl up with and never forget.
The whole world believes Cosima Frank’s life has been a fairytale. Now she’s trying to live up to the overwhelming legacy left to her by her late mother, the Queen of Hollywood. As the pressure begins to build, Cosima does the only thing she can think of: run straight to the inn where her parents met and fell in love, intent on finishing her mother’s bucket list.
Edie Whitelock isn’t like anyone Cosima has ever met. She’s persistent enough to march up to Cosima’s door and provoke her to get out of bed and follow the disarming woman through the charming English village. Edie’s also on the run from her past, but she finds that she relishes bickering with the pretty Los Angeles princess a whole lot more than she expected. The two women couldn’t be more different, but they find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other.
Trapped indoors by thunderstorms, Cosima and Edie discover the inn’s guest book, whose entries date back more than fifty years—and inside it, a romantic treasure hunt left behind by a long-ago guest whose clues unexpectedly send them across England, Spain, and France on an adventure they hope will change both of their lives.
But sometimes the treasure you seek isn’t the one you find.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare, writing as Marvel (If I Told You, I'd Have to Kiss You), deliver a high-heat, high-velocity sapphic romance. Edie's Wisconsin-based vegan creamery has failed and she's licking her wounds on an affordable vacation at Gregory Place, a faded inn in a picturesque English village. California socialite Cosima could have afforded a trip anywhere she liked, but Gregory Place is where her famous actor mother, Phoebe, met her father, and it's the best place to hide from the havoc Phoebe's death has wreaked on Cosima's life. At loose ends in the otherwise empty inn, Edie and Cosima are getting to know each other when the elderly innkeeper, Morag, presents them with a mystery to solve: 50 years ago, author Agatha Llewellyn left a coded entry in the inn's guest book. It's the first clue to a treasure hunt that will take Cosima and Edie all over Europe, a hunt they learn that Agatha set out for Minnie, the love of her life. Marvel rapidly propels the characters through several brochures' worth of locations, and readers will need to pay close attention to keep up. Cosima and Eddie are fun and believably flawed with palpable chemistry, while Agatha and Minnie's romance adds a sense of history and found family to the contemporary plot. This whirlwind of a love story is sure to please.
