This book is so fun!! I have never read anything by Sarah Adler before and I'm so glad I did. Happy Medium is so unique yet feels comfy and familiar. A new comfort read for sure!

Completely delightful, always entertaining, and the perfect combination of hilarious and sentimental!

This was a total delight to read!
This book was on my most anticipated list for this year and WOW it was fun!
It is a unique premise that had me intrigued. This is a romance book that is laugh-out-loud funny but contains characters with heavy emotions. It was a great balance of hilarious and sentimental.
Gretchen is caring and witty, but she likes to keep the circle of people close to her small. Charlie owns a goat farm, he’s has a big heart, but is cautious and therefore grumpy towards Gretchen.
Plus, you add in the aspect of a hilarious, nosy ghost…and this book becomes wildly entertaining.
This has so many great tropes, and I really loved all the banter between the main characters. Plus, it’s set on a farm full of goats and that aspect was super cute!
I also loved the deeper emotional parts of this story. I liked seeing the characters open up to each other and connect!
I definitely recommend reading Happy Medium, and I also recommend reading Mrs. Nash’s Ashes. These books are both standalones and both are great!
This book will be out on April 30th, so add it to your TBR now!!!

Read If You Like:
🐐grumpy/sunshine
🐐enemies to lovers
🐐slow burn
🐐forced proximity
🐐ghosts

I will automatically read anything the author of "Mrs. Nash's Ashes" writes without even reading a blurb.

In starting Happy Medium, the title made me think of something and Sarah Adler immediately put that notion to rest. This book follows our main character, Gretchen Acorn who is a medium that “talks” to spirits. Of course, our girl is actually a con artist but the rich people of the DMV don’t seem to care.

Gretchen is so good that one of her most beloved clients decides to pay her 10k to help one of her old friends sell his farm. Sure that the farm isn’t haunted and that Charlie Waybill isn’t an old man but a rather young and handsome farm owner. Charlie is quick to put her out but Gretchen realizes that her abilities as a medium just haven’t awakened yet.

After meeting Everett Waybill, she agrees to stay as Everett explains that if Charlie sells the farm or leaves for good, he will die and be stuck haunting the farm. The two end up coming up with a plan to get Charlie to not sell. While it ends up being more hijinks than anything, Charlie gets on it by telling Gretchen if she can’t prove she’s a real medium, she has to give his friend her money back.

From there, it’s a race against time for Charlie and Gretchen as she’s trying to save him and he’s trying to get out. Meanwhile, the two are fighting their feelings for each other and Gretchen is slowly becoming charmed by small-town living. Happy Medium made me desperately miss living in a small town and also made me want to adopt a baby goat because this book had everything you could want from a cozy romance.

Sarah Adler also added the ideal amount of sex scenes, angst, and relationship-building to make me love these two. While Charlie seems like a typical jerk at the beginning, it’s clear he’s dealing with a lot and it made me love him even more. All in all, Happy Medium is the ultimate book for spring and if you haven’t picked it up yet, you need to.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Penguin Random House, and Sarah Adler for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

"Maybe showing up to a goat farm looking like Alexis Rose gone goth wasn't the most practical idea."

The universe is blessing me because, once again, I absolutely loved this book! I thought the premise was so fun and unique- a psychic medium a goat farmer? Amazing. And while I went into hoping for a lighthearted romantic comedy, I was so pleasantly surprised at the humor and vulnerability and love the author imbued into the pages.
The book follows Gretchen, a (fake) psychic who is sent to the country by one of her clients to rid a goat farm of a pesky ghost. And though Gretchen may only know of ghosts that which she can con people into believing, she arrives to the farm to discover that her 'gifts' may not be as fake as she once thought... oh, and the handsome owner wants absolutely nothing to do with her.
Enter a delicious forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers situation that I absolutely devoured.

"The man is a flame... But maybe she is, too."

I thought that the anger and distaste between Charlie, said handsome farmer, and Gretchen was believable, and the tension between the two of them kept me staying up way too late to see if they would get their happy ending. And though it took a lot of honesty and trust, a miscommunication here of there, they found their way to each other in a really beautiful way and I just really enjoyed reading their love story. It did not feel forced, but rather a true progression of how it can feel to slowly open yourself up to the love of another person.

"He's so fucking ridiculous, Gretchen thinks. And he's the best friend I've ever had."

But truly, one of my favorite parts of the book was Everett, the resident ghostie who was so ridiculously and hilariously lovable. He was a pest, to be sure, but his longing for companionship and someone to simply care for him was so earnest that I couldn't help but feel for him. The relationship between him and Gretchen was so sweet, but I am glad that he was able to find his happiness.

Overall, I think that this is a really fun read if you are in the mood for something with humor, great character development, spicy spice, a sassy ghost, and a little reflection as to what it means to be a good, loved person in the world. Absolutely would recommend and I can't wait until it is out in the world!

I adored Mrs. Nash's Ashes by Sarah Adler, so I was beyond excited to read this one. While this one has a totally different vibe than the other book, I really enjoyed it! I loved the witty banter between Gretchen and ghost Everett. I'm also a sucker for an enemies to lovers trope so really what's not to like? It's a great rom com for your tbr!

Happy Medium was a refreshing read for me in the rom-com space! There were many times where made some assumptions about how some of it would play out and Sarah Adler completely surprised me by not fully committing to a trope. I loved the complexity of all the main characters and watching each of their journey’s unfold through the book. I will say the beginning felt a little slow, but when it hit the 50% mark and picked up, I wasn’t able to put it down. It was definitely a one-more-chapter kind of night!! Plus, there were so many sweet & thoughtful moments in this book that brought joy to my little romantic soul! I closed this one feel happy, cozy & satisfied.

I hands down loved Mrs Nash’s Ashes so I was hoping to strike gold twice. And I didn’t dislike Happy Medium, exactly, but it was very one-note, mostly falling flat, and I didn’t believe a lot of the emotional truths and reactions once all was said and done.

It’s a great set-up and the beginning is cute and funny, the animosity was entertaining, and there were great city girl out of her element vibes to coast on for a bit. But then it evened out into an earnestness that lost all other momentum and didn’t entirely pan out. Some key moments didn’t strike me as genuine or believable, despite efforts to make them so. And there were hanging teasers that didn’t go anywhere.

Overall, I liked and understood the characters, but I just didn’t entirely feel what I know I was supposed to feel. And it took more motivation than it should have to pick up the book occasionally and finish.

Thank you for the advanced copy!!

The concept of this story is very fun! I was so worried about the lying because I didn’t want it to be the 3rd act breakup! Thankfully it’s not!!

This book literally makes me want to pack up my life and husband and buy a farm! It was cozy and fun! The steamy scenes were very good!! But most of all, I love the tension ! The tension was sooooo good!!

I can’t wait to see this book on shelves!

Delightful little love story involving goats, ghosts, farm life, and hunky farmers. A family curse that brought out the best of both main characters (and the ghost).

A con artist medium, and a struggling goat farm? Doesn't sound like two things that belong together but man did it work for this book! This one charmed me to pieces! I'm not usually a fan of con artists in books but this one surprised me in the best of ways! I highly recommend it!

I love ghosts and romcoms so this book was made for me! It was silly, lighthearted, and romantic with a bit of spook and I can't think of a better romcom combination than that.

Thanks NetGalley for an ARC of Happy Medium in exchange for an honest review!

Happy Medium is perfect for fans of The Dead Romantics or Sara Adler’s first novel, Mrs. Nash’s Ashes! Delightfully macabre, full of heart, and artful humor makes this book such a great read.

Gretchen Acorn, an expert bullshitter, had met her match with Charlie the goat farmer who can see her con from a mile away. This makes the fact that she’s actually telling him the truth about the ghost haunting his farm and the curse that threatens his impending doom that much more difficult to believe.

Reading about Gretchen slowly learn how to let go of the con and risk something real (with her spiritual spectator, Everett’s help) while she falls in love with the farm and Charlie was such a rewarding experience. You really want her to be better, risk it all and tell the truth, and cheer her on as she succeeds. Which is saying a lot, because I find that a character with her background and world views could have easily become unlikable. Charlie’s juxtaposition between tender care-giver and hot-tempered shit talker was also such a fun experience and made his character much more interesting.

My only gripe was that the third act break-up that inevitably occurs in this genre was a little dragged out and relied too heavy on the miscommunication. Gretchen spends A LOT of time in her own head and it gets very tedious at times. Also, I don’t feel like the father issue was ever truly resolved and made me wonder why she included it in the first place if it was going to end up being a loose end. However, this was still a very entertaining and heart warming read. I highly recommend it!

I loved this book and had a great time reading it! It has such a cute, clever premise and I really loved Gretchen's character, the snappy banter she had with Charlie, and the beautiful friendship she formed with Everett. Her belief that people only kept her around based on how useful she was hit a little too close to home at times, but watching her start opening up and trusting that the people in her life now want her just because of who she is was so touching. Her growth over the course of the book was amazing and I loved that she found true contentment and joy in the work she was doing and the life she built for herself.

Her and Charlie's relationship was so much fun. There were times I thought he was a little too harsh with her, but I could also understand where he was coming from in not being able to trust her. The friendship and camaraderie they had that so easily developed into more was done really well. I also love how often Gretchen made Charlie blush - it was freaking adorable. Sarah Adler has definitely become an auto-buy author for me! Thanks to Berkley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

I couldn’t believe I got approved for this ARC on NetGalley but I was thrilled to get my hands on it! The cover caught my eye and the synopsis had me requesting it so quick!

A fake medium who has a job to go exorcise a ghost on a goat farm but then when she arrives, she can actually talk to the ghost?? 😂 I was here for it!!

It had a lot of fun aspects to it, the baby goats, barn cats, Everett (the silly ghost), the slow burn, Gretchen navigating the farm life, etc.
However, it did feel very repetitive and the slow burn was a SLOW burn. I was waiting forever for the connection but then the spice hit and I was shocked with the spice level!

I think this one was really cute and fun with a bit of spice in the last 1/4 but it’s not a book that will change your life - if that makes sense 😂 I am still interested in reading her first book though, Mr. Nash’s Ashes!

A fake medium who claims to speak with dead people meets a spirited spirit who helps her to break a family’s curse in this hilarious and tender paranormal romance. Con artist Gretchen Acorn has a string of wealthy clients that pay her to reconnect with dead loved ones. When a regular widowed client pays her $10,000 to visit her friend Charlie Waybill to exorcise the ghost on his goat farm that is sabotaging the potential sales on his ancestral home, Gretchen isn’t expecting a hot, young farmer; nor is she expecting Charlie to call her out as a fraud immediately–and THEN she meets the ghost that is actually haunting the property. Everett is a wanna-be actor and television sitcom addict who fancies himself a ladies man and a matchmaker; he informs Gretchen that his lingering is a curse that will pass to Charlie if he sells the farm and leaves. The only way to break it is to take the farm off the market and stay put because there must always be a Waybill on the property. Gretchen offers to stay and help through the kidding season and spend a month convincing Charlie she’s legit. During her stay, she learns new skills, comes up with money making ideas, gets on Charlie’s nerves (and under his skin)

The worldbuilding is tight, from the charming farm to Everett’s existence. He poofing to the Nowhere if he overexerts himself to impose his will in the corporeal world, his loss of time in that dimension. The character study is equally strong, with details like Gretchen’s ability to cry on demand–in fact, all of her con tricks learned from her slimy dear old dad–revealed in small doses that juxtapose her childhood with the life Charlie’s known: homecooked meals, homemade sweaters, and Grandma’s lemon meringue pie versus hole in the walls on the run and on the road. Charlie is a soft-hearted man who sports whimsical tattoos under crazily colored handknit sweaters, who takes pity on a lady covered in mud even when he suspects she threw herself into a giant mud-puddle to buy some time and talk to him. And it’s only Charlie who starts to make Gretchen feel regret for her lies, pangs of vulnerability at being honest, and fear at the idea she might not be able to save him and prevent an untimely death and eternal haunting.

A reader’s guide for book groups is appended, along with an excellent author’s note that speaks to the combination of lightheartedness and depth , how the novel started as a bit of joke, and evolved to something loneliness and belonging.

I received a free advance reader’s review copy of #HappyMedium via #NetGalley, courtesy of Berkley Publishing Group.

I was so excited to get into this after being obsessed with Mrs. Nash's Ashes! I was not disappointed!

Gretchen, our MC, is a fake spirit medium and her number one rule is to always to leave people better off then when she met them, so as to not get lost in the morality of it all. Her biggest elderly woman client offers her a grandiose chunk of change she cannot refuse to go and help a seemingly old man sell his goat farm by performing an exorcism and clearing out the bad energy to get the place good to go, what she did not expect to find was that she actually could see and talk to this ghost, and that it is not an old man there after all, but a strapping young farmer who is equal parts grumpy and soft and not falling for any of her BS.

What I loved most about this story was our characters and our backdrop in which we got to see them progress within themselves. I thought that Gretchen and Charlie were both very complex and I enjoyed watching them develop. Everett was hilarious and achingly vulnerable and probably my favorite part of this whole story. He and Gretchen really got to the root of their emotional problems together by becoming the friends they did and that, in turn, helped her open up to Charlie even more.

I found the writing to be very tender and clever, and I am always so delighted with all of the quips and jokes and descriptives that Sarah Adler uses and how her characters speak. It just is my favorite.

Something that I struggled with a little bit was the journey of Gretchen getting Charlie to trust her. It felt very hard earned and a little times frustrating, but I understand that this was definitely needed for the story to work the way it did, so that is not a negative thing by any means. But I just found myself being like !!!! THERES A GHOST GODDAMNITTTTTT!!!!!! I felt a little wrung out by the time he finally believed her.

The romantic and spicy scenes were really well done imo- I think that they teeter tottered on the line of both intimate and hot hot, so there was a good balance there.

Overall, I really liked this story!! I loved the setting and our characters and their personalities and just the aesthetic and it all. There were some great highlights in here and I am excited for others to get to read it as well! 4.5/5 round up to 5!!!!

gretchen is a fake spirit medium who channels really good research and genuine empathy for her clients into her work, guided by a rule that she only will share what helps them. she gets hired to go to a farm and figure out what’s been haunting it, and she’s surprised to find that not only is the owner NOT an elderly man but a hottie farmer, and that there in fact IS a ghost and she CAN see him. maybe she’s not a fake after all?!

shenanigans ensue, of course, and gretchen has to convince hottie farmer charlie to stay or the curse that’s kept ghost everett haunting for the farm for nearly 100 years will befall him too.

DON’T WORRY— she has a few weeks and naturally, that’s enough time for her to become bff with the ghost and to fall in love with the farmer!!! oh, and also help birth some bebe goats and sell soap at the farmer’s market and totally become a new person at the same time. because of course.

but in all seriousness, this is a cutie read and it’s charming and fun and sarah adler writes delightfully earnest and tender stories that i will read every time!

Playful one minute and heart-wrenching the next, this strikes the perfect balance for an entertaining yet powerful read. It reminded me a little bit of The Dead Romantics with the humor and heat cranked up several notches, though this love story is truly one of a kind. I loved the chemistry between the characters, the slow-building romance, the forced proximity and the flawed heroine. It’s rare that I read about a morally grey heroine, and I loved how she was able to grow and change throughout the course of the book. Our hero was also immensely appealing, the softest grump ever. Absolutely loved him. He’s a genuinely kind and loving man who sees right through our heroine, pushing her to acknowledge some uncomfortable truths about herself. His distrust of the whole situation creates some interesting friction, so I couldn’t wait to see how it all played out. I loved it!

The story follows Gretchen, a woman who was raised to be a con artist. Her father taught her to spin every situation to her advantage, so she’s been working as a medium for the last several years – convincing her clients that she can communicate with spirits, and making a great living doing it. So when Gretchen’s best client pays her to help out a friend with a ghost problem, she doesn’t see it as anything other than a new kind of con. But one step on Charlie’s property makes her realize that this situation is different. Charlie immediately knows that Gretchen is a fraud, and her usual tactics fail her. There’s also the unfortunate fact that the place is actually haunted… and Gretchen truly can communicate with this ghost. A family curse complicates matters even further, and suddenly Gretchen finds herself grappling with a situation that is entirely out of her control.

After loving Mrs. Nash’s Ashes, I was so excited to dig into Adler’s sophomore effort. Her debut was tender and funny in the best of ways, making me smile, laugh, swoon, and shed a few tears. I really didn’t know what to expect going into this one, but I can honestly say that it put me through my paces emotionally in much the same way. It’s such a fun and interesting premise, but there are heavier, impactful moments sprinkled throughout the book. Yes, I loved the absurdity of Gretchen arguing with a TV-addicted ghost while trying to win over her grumpy new roommate, but I also loved the journey of self-reflection and the many, many tender moments. Both Charlie and Gretchen have some healing to do, working on themselves in ways that only draw them closer. The love story shines front and center, but it’s the kind that develops in tiny steps that slowly build momentum. There was definitely some heat and spice, but the intimacy bled from the pages more than anything. It’s truly Gretchen’s story – we only get her perspective – but I was hooked on Charlie from the very beginning. I even liked the ghost. My love for this one grew with every chapter, and it ended up being such a dynamic, memorable read.

Happy Medium is a paranormal rom-com that's anything but average. Fake spirit medium Gretchen Acorn is ready to hustle her way to some quick cash by "cleansing" a goat farm haunted by a chatty ghost named Everett. Little does she know, the farm's owner, Charlie Waybill, is no AARP member, but a hot and skeptical farmer who challenges her supernatural act. As the ghostly shenanigans escalate, Gretchen finds herself caught between love, a farm, and a very persistent specter. I didn't love Gretchen right off the bat but she definitely grew on me over the course of the story! With wit and charm, this book proves that sometimes, being yourself is the greatest con of all. Four stars for a delightful blend of romance, humor, and ghostly capers – who knew the afterlife could be so entertaining?
Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!