I was not expecting exceptional literature when I requested this. I just wanted a good time with some enemies to lovers tropes.

This book was.... okay. Not horrible but nothing too exciting. There was some problematic relationship dynamics, and a lot of repetition.

Cute, fun & quick read. The story was fun and kept me engaged the whole time. It was slightly predictable, but I still liked it! Would definitely recommend to a friend or patron who is looking for fun kitschy romances.

This book was just not for me. I was expecting something totally different.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for me review.

I f I Stopped Haunting you is cute with a side of spooky. 👻 I'd say it's a light spooky, where the creepy castle, ghosts and paranormal activity is described so well! 🏰 The main characters and their friends all have such fun personalities that I wish I was on the retreat with them! Pen and Neil have started off both grumpy but they get together and are so sweet (with some spice, of course). 🥰 I love that he lets her read his original book without edits and how in awe of her he is!! 📚

I was really looking forward to this. But, unfortunately I didn’t I really liked the premise of the book but did not enjoy the way it was executed. The FMC was incredibly insufferable. I live enemies to lovers but this just didn’t do it for me.

I really wanted to enjoy If I Stopped Haunting You but it unfortunately didn't work for me. I love the enemies to lovers trope but I did not like this one. I felt the main female character was physically and mentally abusive and that didn't sit well with me. She never had to be accountable for her actions. I would not recommend this book to others because it made me uncomfortable and it wasn't scary.

Penelope Skinner is unable to hold her tongue as she sits on an interview panel with fellow indigenous horror author Neil Storm. His “sell out” books are hits while she can’t seem to write anything new. After the disastrous interview, Pen agrees to attend a private writer's retreat at a seemingly haunted castle in Scotland. The last thing she expects or wants is to find Neil Storm at the same retreat.

I found Penelope difficult to like, her reactions to Neil were way over the top. Little by little Neil broke down her prickly defenses and the chemistry between the two was combustible. The peripheral characters, Laslo and Daniela, don’t add much to the story at all. It seemed like I was reading two different books and might have been better if the author had stuck to either horror or romance. I felt the story lost steam at the end when resolving the mystery of the haunting. I'm giving this 3⭐️because it was easy to read, the story flowed smoothly, and the chemistry was written well.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this complimentary ARC. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

📖ARC Review

✨If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens✨

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
🗓️Releasing October 15, 2024

Months after publicly calling out fellow author Neil Storm, author Penelope Skinner is having a hard time writing anything. So, when she is invited to a writers retreat in Scotland by her friend, she decides to go. Unfortunately for her, Neil is also there. Will they reconcile? And what’s this about a haunted castle….

So this book wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. Penelope annoyed me a bit - she refused to take any of the blame for her own downfall, when she was the one who called Neil out first (and threw a book at his head). The situation could’ve been handled a different way. I also thought the ending was a bit anticlimactic. The romance in this book was cute, I do love enemies to lovers.

Thank you so much Colby Wilkens and NetGalley for this ARC! If I Stopped Haunting You is releasing October 15, 2024.

The plot of the book was good overall. I just had a hard time connecting with the main characters. I enjoyed the spooky setting of this story, though!

I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley for review. My opinions are my own.

5/5 stars

This was an extremely fun read. Two Indigenous horror writers are enemies and end up at a writing retreat together.

Surprise! The house is haunted.

They bond over shared experiences (and the haunted house!)… I can’t give anything away but I just have to say that this book is a great read. You won’t be disappointed.

Enemies to lovers. Check.
Author protagonists. Check.
Scary times. Check.
Sexy times. Check.

This was fast paced and lacked any lulls in the story.

This book requires a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief going in, and not because of the ghosts and haunted castle. You will have to suspend your disbelief that after the opening scene of this book, where Pen publicly humiliates, mocks, and assaults Neil for absolutely no fucking reason, that these two people can be together by the end of this book. I know we’re all on a “enemies means they actually hate each other!” kick right now, but her behavior from page one is so wildly batshit for a character who is meant to be based in our actual human world, that the story has absolutely no chance of making up the difference.

Every single time the Incident is brought up, she defends her actions with some variation of “well Neil wrote a book that misrepresents Native characters, he’s taking up a publishing spot that could go to an author who writes an authentic Native experience!” as if that’s a good reason to shit on his work at a public event and /throw a fucking book at his head/. A event at which, I might point out, PEN IS ALSO A PANELIST…like, girl, you literally have a seat at the table that you are accusing him of hoarding!! She constantly phrases her dislike of him and his work as “look what he’s done to ME, he’s ruined MY career,” managing to come off as simultaneously irrationally self-centered and deeply insecure. There’s also a bit of “publishing is easier for a /man/“ which, given that Neil is a visibly Native genre writer, I sincerely doubt is the case. Even if everything she says about him is true, how is any of that a) his fault or b) relevant to your personal relationship with him? It’s utterly baffling and makes engaging with any other part of the story nearly impossible. We never get any clear picture of why Neil’s book is considered “bad rep” and we never get a perspective from any other Native character on his work, not the other panelists, not Daniela, not either of their families, /nothing/.

Later, Pen will wonder how she could have ever hated Neil and all I can say is, girl, same. He has done nothing to Pen, caused no harm to her reputation or her career, never said a bad word to her except in retaliation for her insults to him in the opening scene (in which he is clearly trying to salvage the event). But somehow it’s his fault that she was “cancelled” and has writer’s block. This simply makes no sense and, as a result, the eventual mutual reconciliation between them makes no sense. Neil has nothing to apologize to Pen for, has never been her enemy, and has basically just been misunderstood the whole time through no fault of his own.

Pen being insufferable is taking up too much of this review, but, like I said, the foundation makes it hard to take the rest of the story seriously. This is ostensibly a horror romance, but the romance/reconciliation storyline is already resolved by the first half of the book and the ghost shit barely shows up until the second half. Literally, the first time the characters fully see the ghost isn’t until 57%. There should have been more of an attempt to merge these two plotlines, and maybe make the horror elements…actually feel scary? Pen and Neil react pretty mildly to suddenly confronting real life actual ghosts, because this still needs to be a romance novel and so they can’t actually be terrified for their lives and focused on escaping, there needs to be weirdly placed sex scenes and more feelings talks too. It results in everyone seeming weirdly dismissive of the horrific and dangerous shit that begins happening.

Other things: the logistics of the retreat are strange and make no sense—the fact that this takes place in a Scottish castle (that everyone hates?) seems to have no relevance or connection to anything else in the story, Lazslo and Daniela are non-entities (and not very good friends tbh) that only serve to interrupt Pen and Neil, comment on what they are doing, and then conveniently leave them alone, the backstory of the ghosts is not interesting and also doesn’t really tie into the story, the epilogue is silly.

I know reviews are mixed on this one, but I thought it was a solid read. The setting was lovely and I adored all of the details given. The fact they main two characters were not white made for a good read too. I was a fan all around. There was a touch of miscommunication but I think it was more about being in your feelings and judging too harshly based off that instead of anything the other did on purpose. Interesting read. The ghost aspect wasn't really scary, but it made some scenes intense.

This author’s next book looks GREAT, but I just don’t think this book was well done. It was really slow and I almost gave up multiple times. The “enemies” aspect was childish and repetitive. The side characters added nothing to the book. And the haunting was honestly pretty lame. And the books-within-the-book didn’t sell me that any of these people would be bestselling authors. I just don’t think this book was really ready to be put out with major pacing issues and overall cheesiness and predictability. I’d probably read the next one, though.

It's a cutthroat world for Native authors hoping to be published in a white-dominated field, especially in the horror genre. Penelope has always felt less than the others since she can't prove her "nativeness," no one threatens her more than Neil Storm, America's horror-writing hero. He is everything she hates about the publishing world, a sell-out of their heritage and culture, and she isn't afraid to let him know it. But now, the two are thrown together four months after a public fight at a writer's retreat in a haunted Scottish castle. Neither is happy to see the other, but they both need this retreat; they both need to be able to write again! What they never bargained for was for the place actually to be HAUNTED! Now, they are thrown together, trying to solve a decades-old mystery while fighting their growing attraction to each other. Will the two be able to lay old spirits and resentments to rest and move into a future that involves love?

There were plenty of elements I loved about this book, but there were also a few that I really didn't enjoy.

What I liked: I loved the pacing, it was fast and kept me hooked throughout the whole book. The setting was amazing, it was perfectly eerie, I couldn't have imagined a better location for a haunted castle. The horror wasn't extreme, which for me personally is great! I was able to read this book at night without having to keep the light on.

What I only kind of liked: The romance between Pen and Neil was interesting... There were moments were I loved them and their interacts, and you can really feel the pining for each other. But there were also areas where their relationship in general had the potential for more. I feel like their emotional conversations could have lasted longer or at least not been cut short by ghost shenanigans. The mystery aspect was "meh." It was shallow and predictable. But this wasn't a make or break for me, I went into this book for the romance.

What I hated/thought was completely irrelevant to the story: The fact that Pen through the book at Neil.... I hated that. I also didn't like when Pen threw her shoe and it (accidentally) hit Neil. I feel like there are other ways of showing hatred for someone. Pen also could have apologized a lot sooner.

I appreciated the diversity of the characters and the commentary on being in the publishing industry as a BIPOC author.

I look forward to seeing how this series and the author themselves evolve!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC. This book was a fun and different read. Yes, it was repetitive at times and yes, some of the characters could have been left out but, overall, it still made for a unique tale and I enjoyed reading how it all played out.

Maybe I’ll come back to it….
🌟🌟🌟
Honestly, I was really excited about this one. Especially due to the MC and representation. However… I found it hard to root for the MC. Seems like clashing which just kinda made the whole story feel eh.

I’m hoping to come back but I DNF’d at 60%

If I Stopped Haunting You was a very enjoyable/fun and even spooky read. This story has it all; enemies to lovers, forced proximity, comedic side characters, spicy and spooky ghosts.

If I Stopped Haunting You was a very enjoyable/fun and even spooky read. Two indigenous writers are struggling to reclaim their voices in the publishing world and have been pitted against each other as sworn enemies. A haunted house in Scotland is just what these two stubborn characters need to force them to see each other's sides of the story. This story has it all; enemies to lovers, forced proximity, comedic side characters, and spooky ghosts.