3.75

I really enjoyed her first book and this one was on the same level.

I thought this book was a fun, cozy paranormal romcom. The FMC can see ghosts, which help both characters process loss and provide commentary on LGBTQ in society. The MMC struggles with his bisexuality as well, and is bullied to hide it. Overall, I think the two characters were a good match in a very "opposites attract" relationship.

It's a very quick romance with several spicy scenes that explore a casual dom/sub dynamic (no slow burn here!) which allowed the characters to develop their relationship faster and was very entertaining

📖 Book Review 📖 I’m of that magic millennial age where the phrase “I see dead people” rings a special nostalgia and forever changed the world for the better. Rosemary Shaw can see dead people and channeled her unique gift into a bestselling novel. Her dreams are growing in a big way as her book gets made into a movie…but her biggest complaint is that the lead heartthrob of the movie Ellis Finch is not who she envisioned for the role. As filming begins at Hallowvale Manor, the ambiance matches the film perfectly as the real life ghosts bring the haunts to action. And as Rosemary’s vision comes to fruition and she gets to know Ellis, she may just find that she was all wrong about him…

Some people wait all year for the Christmas rom coms to roll out, and some wait for the paranormal love stories to come and haunt their kindles and bookshelves…Love at First Sight is just what the second crowd waits all year for!

A Hauntingly Good Time!
Love at First Fright was such a fun and charming read! The paranormal twist mixed with the age-gap, enemies-to-lovers romance kept things fresh and engaging. Rosemary and Ellis had great banter and chemistry, and the cozy, ghost-filled mansion setting made for the perfect backdrop. I especially loved the ghost dog and the sweet Regency-era side couple! The balance of spooky, steamy, and sweet was spot on. My only tiny gripe is that I wanted just a bit more emotional depth between the leads—but overall, this was an entertaining and heartwarming story I’d definitely recommend!

2.5 stars.

For me, this book was just medium. No amount of imagining the MMC as Theo James could get me truly immersed into this story :( The romance felt a bit forced, with no tension or yearning that drew me in. Additionally, the magical elements were very one sided and didn’t become a huge plot point in the relationship until the very end of the book. It was well written, but I just could not connect with the main characters or their relationship.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for sending this book. I devoured it much quicker than I thought I would. Normally, I don’t love instant romance, but I thought this story was cute.

I think the whole situation with ‘Hank’ really solidified it for me. I think anytime a pet passes, I turn into a mess.

However, I will say the whole Juliet and Cecilia debacle was interesting (?) for lack of a better term. It almost felt forced in there, and while the outcome was good, I just didn’t feel very interested in what was going on.

Editing corrections:

- Capitalized And in the midst of a sentence
- The emojis don’t translate well via kindle..there is gibberish after them
- When talking to Juliet, the author says “you and Juliet” when she means “you and Cecilia”
- Weird page break on first page ch. 15

This was a decent read, I did find myself struggling to have any attachment to the characters and the pacing felt off. Overall I did enjoy the unique plot line and found the ghost aspects very interesting.

The last book Nadia wrote I was glued to and absolutely devoured it. However, I can't say the same for this book. Compared to her previous book, this was dead and not enough paranormal and excitement. I was really bored around the 30% and it did nothing but drag.

This was a strong 4.5 for me over all, I loved both Rosemary and Ellis together and on their own. Rosemary is in her 30s and was unapologetic about who she was and what she wanted and I loved that she was covered in tattoos. Ellis was a soft dom that was in his 40s, who I didn't blame for his reactions considering the industry he works in, it was all understandable. I loved how they were both honest with each other for the most part and once they started dating they were so devoted to each other. I did think her reaction was a bit much in the end though about what he did and I'm glad she admitted it but that's where the 4.5 comes from, her strong personality and trust in him takes a weak hit, I understand her reasoning but she should have come to her senses a lot sooner in my opinion. The spice was pretty great, I just feel like we got cheated out of a promised scene that never happened. Since this was an unedited copy there were some errors but one that happened often at a certain point in the book was almost like an amazon URL inserted and cut off some words, but again it was unedited so I get that.

I don’t think this was the book for me. When I read the author note about the d/s dynamic I almost didn’t read it, but decided to give it a chance.
To start things off, I think having a female author literally hate the male actor because he wasn’t exactly what she imagined as her character not mature at all and I didn’t like the hate to love plot from that. I really didn’t feel anything towards either Rosemary or Ellis, and Ellis kept giving bare minimum until he built her a home office. Also the amount of times we have to read the name rosemary gets repetitive and annoying.
I also admit I don’t like a super spicy plot line with only two or three heartfelt moments. When the spice over reaches the plot, I don’t believe the characters really fall in love. I believe they are physically attracted to one another and that’s awesome, but when they can’t even think about each other without wanting to take their clothes off it gets old and I was rolling my eyes.
I loved the bi, queer and trans representation in this book and the conversation around how scary it is to be in the closet and being open and honest not with just yourself, but how others perceive you and treat you. I loved this narrative with Ellis and how much shot he went through with his agent but also using a pair of queer Victorian ghosts was a bit of an odd choice. When the synopsis included a manor with ghosts I thought there would be more than two and a ghost dog. I just think it was all a little bit of mess. This just wasn’t the right book for me and that’s ok!

Very cute and easy read with some fun twists and turns. Loved the ghosts and was ready to eat up every interaction with them. The spice was top notch too.

Thank you so much to the author and publisher for the ARC of Love at First Fright! This romcom was such a FUN surprise!! 4.25 ⭐️

The story follows Rosemary, a horror author who lands a movie deal on one of her books—only to find out she definitely does not approve of the actor cast as her male lead, Ellis. From the moment these two meet, the tension is top tier —sharp, witty, and electric in all the best ways.

Rosemary’s humor is subtle but so appreciated, and Ellis is the kind of infuriatingly charming character you can’t help but root for. Their dynamic kept me flipping pages way too late.

The ghost-seeing twist was fun, though not totally essential to the plot. Still, it gave the story a light, whimsical vibe that reminded me of Ghosts (the sitcom)—and I loved it.

Now, the spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
The latter half of the book turns up the heat, and omgggg was it good. Explicit, yes—but no cringe, no awkwardness, just beautifully written scenes that felt natural and emotionally rich. Absolute perfection.

Yes, the third-act conflict was predictable, but honestly? I didn’t care. This book was fun, fast-paced, and full of heart. Definitely recommend if you’re looking for a romcom with banter, a supernatural twist, and swoon-worthy spice!

Soft dnfing at 48%, unfortunately I wasn’t really feeling the chemistry between the mcs and found the book had a few too many of my own personal icks such as:

- canon mentions of Jane Austen and thus inner monologues about how it’s so hot that a man knows literally anything about Jane Austen (it’s not that hot, I dont understand and it keeps coming up constantly in contemporary romances I read so this was a slight trigger)

- inconsistent britishness/knowledge - at some point our fmc, who lived in the uk for a bit and has written a moderately successful book based in England, was surprised to learn that “love” is used as a term of endearment ?? That just made me laugh bc it felt like a strange thing for her to not have known let alone for her mmc to be the first to do to her but ok

- delayed sex for the sake of tension but there’s lowkey no stakes (self explanatory)

I was really hoping to enjoy this and kept willing myself to at least get to the spice because I did enjoy those parts the most throughout the book but I reflected on it and if I had done that, I would’ve purely been neglecting majority of the book since I didn’t really care at all about the book-movie being made and even the ghosts in love sideplot felt a little dry.

I did love the premise a lot in the beginning!

thank you so much nonetheless to netgalley and ballantine for this arc to review!

This story follows a horror author and an actor who is cast in an adaptation of her book. At first, there is some tension between the two (she doesn't really think he's right for the role, that kind of thing). There is a little portion of this book that feels like it's supposed to be an enemies to lovers sort of thing, but that switches up so fast that I would not consider this book to be enemies to lovers.

This was definitely a cute, quick and fun little read. I did want a bit more depth to the characters, I think them switching to liking each other so fast was what kind of threw me off for a bit there with these characters.

Also, there are ghosts. I feel like that was important to share. Also, the FMC sees animal ghosts?? If I could see animal ghosts, I would be petting them all.

This was definitely fun and definitely appropriate for a little autumnal romance read (so if you're preparing your seasonal TBRs, here ya go!).

Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review! My Goodreads review is up and my TikTok (Zoe_Lipman) review will be up at the end of the month with my monthly reading wrap-up.

it's always fun getting an ARC "off season". this is definitely a fall book, but i had no problem enjoying it!

i love a good celeb romance, especially when the other main character is doing "behind the scenes" work for whatever the other MC is famous for. Ellis and Rosemary were super cute and i loved how authentic their love felt.

at times, i started to get a little exasperated with the issues regarding publicity. him fake dating another actress, him being blackmailed about his sexuality by his manager, him lying at the end to protect rosemary from the sex tape that didn't exist. i understand all of these were meant as pressure points for the larger issue of ellis not being able to be honest in his public life, but at times it felt exhausting! i wish he had to grovel a little more at the end when he lied on television. when she said i'm sorry at the same time as him i was like - girl what?

this may just be me being toxic, i always want the man to grovel. even if the woman is in the wrong, i want men groveling in my romance books! he didn't do anything that needed significant apology, but i wanted more of a public statement and reckoning for everything that occurred prior to jumping to the epilogue. like i wish they went public and he retracted his statement, etc etc before the epilogue happened, and then they used the epilogue just to show us their happy life after that, not to tie up the loose ends, if that makes sense!

still a 4 star for me, i love a spooky love story

Huge thanks to Netgalley, Nadia El-Fassi and the publishing team for this eARC.

This is my first book by this Author but there is another in the series but can be read as stand alone. Our FMC Rosemary is an American Horror Author and our MMC is her leading Male Actor for her book that is being made into a horror movie. At the start of the story our FMC does not think the MMC is the right person casted to the role and she makes it known - there's a little bit of enemies to lovers going on but it dissipates pretty quickly into like and then love. This author is very conscious of using inclusive language and of representation in her story.

This book had a lot of spice scenes, more than I was expecting as I was expecting a cuter, fluffy story but overall i thought it was a great mix of plot and spice. All the supporting characters aren't overly complicated, add value to the story and make the world feel more complete. Something i really loved about this book was the element of the FMC being able to see ghosts - this was done really well and it added a lot of depth and whimsy to the story that i really loved.

**Spoiler**
There is a third act breakup but it is resolved quickly and without a ton of drama.

Overall, this was a super cute read - absolutely well timed with a fall release for spooky season. I look forward to seeing what this author writes next.



Overall rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Overall spice 🌶️ 🌶️🌶️

I have had the pleasure of reading both a Nadia's books but this one very well may be my favorite. Nadia has a way of bringing the characters to life and this was all around a fun read.