I was so excited to read If I Stopped Haunting You, it seemed like it was going to be the perfect read for me. Unfortunately, the trigger warnings page left me thinking this book wouldn’t be for me. I didn’t want to read it, but thought it would only be fair to give it a chance. I skimmed the first 5 chapters and already hated the characters. Pen was extremely unlikable, and I decided to save myself from any further reading. (Upon reading other reviews here, Pen doesn’t get any better and I’m glad I skipped this one.)

I received an advanced copy from netgalley in exchange for a review and opinions are my own.

Decided to skip for now, the chemistry between characters felt subpar at best, and the motivations were hard to at least find something to stick around for.

This was a fun, spooky read and I've really never read anything like it before. It was enemies to lovers and forced proximity (which I have definitely read before), but there was a large sprinkling of horror elements that were done really well.
A group of writers (some are friends, some are not) travel to a haunted castle in Scotland for a week-long writing retreat. Two of the friends (who are enemies, but find each other very attractive) start noticing and hearing things that the rest of the group does not, and decide to get to the bottom of it. The main characters are Native American and touch on how that affects their experience in the publishing world.
The scene is set really well and I enjoyed the Scottish castle -vibes-.
Thank you to Net Galley for the e-ARC!

I enjoyed this book. I found it to be entertaining and it had elements of horror with the haunting of a castle and romance was in there too. I loved the setting being a haunted castle and the mystery of it.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan for the advance copy.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishing company for giving me access! All opinions are completely my own.

I thought was this book was really cute. I enjoyed the banter and the wittiness of the two characters. It's always interesting to see how writers portray other writers. I loved the dynamic between Pen and Neil. I thought they had the perfect amount of chemistry, and the perfect amount of hatred for each other. As for the rest of the plot, I enjoyed the spookiness of the book. At some points, I felt my own heart was racing because of how scary it was! Overall, this books was solid and I enjoyed it.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read this!
First and foremost: the steamy scenes are quite good. The dual POV is quite good. I actually liked some of the commentary regarding race and being an indigenous writer.
But after that I'm not sure what this book wanted to be. Is it a romance? Is it a horror novel? It never really dipped its toes into either but instead sort of straddled a whole bunch of lines. I was never really creeped out, I thought the leads moved a little too quickly from enemies to lovers (attraction only goes so far) and I really wanted some good conclusions on the ghost story. Also, for a book very centered around indigenous writers, I didn't think that story line really got the send off or culmination it deserved either.

This book was amazing! I loved the characters and the plot was very well written. The writer is very talented and the story was very interesting.

This one just did not check any of my boxes

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review!

Really thought I'd like this one, but it fizzled. Certain actions of the female main character made her hard to root for, especially in a romance.

I wanted to enjoy this book so much, but it fell flat. The entire story takes place over the course of about 72 hours, maybe? The premise that the retreat is a week long made me expect a bit more of a slow burn, but that's not what happened. The enemies become lovers in about a day, despite their frustrations with each other being real and rooted in kind of big-deal stuff. The haunting stuff is pretty mild for a while, then suddenly turns dangerous, then gets a bit confusing and campy. The horror elements were severely lacking, and there was almost no natural character development.

This book has the MOST wild mash up of romance AND horror/thriller! The fact that the MCs go to stay in a haunted castle in Scotland AND write horror stories but it's a romance book!?!?! It's such a fun juxtaposition! PLUS the fact that the story is enemies to lovers is so *chef's kiss*!
I also LOVED all of the representation in this book! The fact that both MCs are Native AND the FMC is curvy! There's also a TON of suspense in this book! The fact that there is a ghost mystery subplot!?! There's so much more too and it is so fun to get to see everything and for everything to fall into place!👀
I hope to see more weird romance + horror/thriller type books in the future! Thank you so much to St. Martin's Griffin for an early copy of this fun read!

What a wonderfully descriptive, haunting book! I loved the angst, the pining and the setting! Colby has a way with immersing a reader in scene and having the setting come alive.

I wanted so badly to love this book. Horror authors trapped in a haunted castle? Sign me up, babe. But it just didn’t do it for me. The story felt like it needed to be fleshed out a bit more.

The falling-in-love (like?) felt like it happened too fast. And they kept falling into bed together despite the fact that they kept saying they were in a life or death situation.

The ghost aspect and mystery surrounding it were great, but I would have liked to see the side characters more involved with it. It’s almost as if they were an afterthought.

Maybe this book will go through some more edits, because it has the potential to be so much better.

If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens is the perfect spooky season read! Authors on a writing retreat in a haunted castle?! Sign me up!

I was honestly super excited to start this book based off the synopsis and it seemed like a really interesting concept and horror/romance combo. The execution just didn’t work for me. The book starts with the fmc literally attacking the mmc both verbally and physically and her reaction just seemed really over the top. And I don’t really feel there was any great growth or character development for her (he was a little better but not much) from there. I guess I just didn’t really connect with the characters both main and supporting, so it felt like a chore to finish the story.

This was…not great. It started off with the fmc verbally attacking and then physically attacking the mmc for seemingly no reason other than jealousy and it just doesn’t get better from there. I’m sorry.

This book was cuteee!! I'm definitely going to revisit it during spooky season because reading this in spring was not the vibe. Anywho, the characters were really well done, and the plot was engaging. I liked how the story was layered, almost like a cake with one layer of romance, a layer of humor, then a layer of mystery/paranormal. I find it funny that other reviews mentioned how the main character was abusive. She threw a book at a man, are you telling me that you've never thought about throwing a book at a man? Nevertheless, a great book!

I unfortunately had to DNF this at 45%. I had high hopes for this book, the synopsis of the book sounded good, the cover art is beautiful and I'm a sucker for an enemies to lovers..it's my favorite trope. But Penelope and Neil just weren't it for me😩 They were just were at each others throats when most enemies to lovers, there's some witty, sarcastic funny banter but with them it was down right toxic fighting. I also felt like the side characters, mostly Laszo, were way to prominent in a lot of the dialogue..sometimes I felt like way more than the two main characters were talking to each other.

Thank you to Netgalley for allowing me to read this ARC.

I really wanted to love this book, but it was not to be. While there were some parts I loved (the prologue, some moments of banter and one or two passages where I could visualize the spookiness), the end product just fell a bit flat. The biggest let down is perhaps the fact that this book is marketed as an enemies-to-lovers romance-horror. The relationship between the two main characters was more based on lust than actual romance, and they were lusting after one another within 24 hours of them finding out they were on this writing trip together. It felt extremely rushed, but is also felt forced, like the plotpoints were not happening naturally but because the author made them happen. As for the horror-aspect, this was not horror. And that's coming from a grade A scaredy cat who avoids horror movies as much as possible. While I had hoped the horror wouldn't be too much or too gorey since it was a combination with romance, I didn't expect it to just have some spooky vibes. There are maybe two scenes in which the author describes a ghost as a decaying corpse in some detail, but this was less exciting than scenes in which the MC's were just exploring the forbidden west wing of the haunted house, in which I could really feel the tension. In conclusion: it was a bit spooky, but not horror per my definition.

The combination of horror and romance intrigued me, but sadly it didn't work in this book. The tonal shifts between some passages were so abrupt, that it felt like there were two different books mashed together. For example, and maybe it's just me, but I found it very weird that the two MC's were literally attacked by a ghost, barely escaped, and then were like "well let's have sex now, we could die, but we're too horny". I mean, I have read/seen things in which people almost died, defeat the evil and then have sex to celebrate the fact they survived, but while the danger is still there? Literally just a couple rooms over? Is this a trope I was (blissfully) unaware of?

I appreciate both characters being flawed and essentially being opposites of one another, however, I don't understand why the author decided to mitigate the assault of the FMC (her throwing a book out of jealousy and rage at the MMC in the prologue) by having readers on online forums support her actions. While the FMC did show regrets of her assault in the book, this was before she knew people supported her, and I can't help but wonder if the growth she seemed to show would realistically still be intact after finding out. This is not to say that characters have to become perfect beings after their journey, but calling the FMC a 'hero' instead of holding her accountable is baffling to me.

Sadly this book was a miss, but as I did enjoy parts of the writing, I will probably give this author a second chance. I have read the synopsis of her second book coming in 2025, an adventure romance, and I have good hopes for it.

What do you do when your envy leaves you frothing at the mouth about another author who you consider a sell out to the white man? You commit assault, right? That's the only reasonable thing to do when you, a white-passing Native woman who writes Native horror, finds the most famous Native horror author lacking authenticity. Penelope is unhinged, and it's honestly hard to see what Neil sees in her, besides her beauty, but the nutty antics these characters endured kept me reading. The story unfolds in a haunted castle and sexual tension blends with terror as the ghosts creep on these two while they're dry humping one another in stairways and hallways and towers. Pen and Neil have to be the horniest couple ever, running from a decaying corpse one minute to jumping each other's bones the next. I guess the smell of decay is an aphrodisiac. The truth is, this story is nutty from start to finish, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.