Love At First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi
Rating: 4/5
Spice: 3/5
Plot: 4/5
Primary Genre: Paranormal Romance
Blurb:
In this paranormal spicy age gap romance, a successful horror author whose novel is being adapted into a movie clashes with the actor cast as the male lead, all in a cozy mansion filled with ghosts, from the author of Best Hex Ever
Rosemary Shaw’s ability to see the dead has never scared her. In fact, it’s secretly inspired most of her horror novels. Now at twenty-nine, Rosemary is an acclaimed author, and her most successful book is about to be a blockbuster movie. The film set is in a beautiful manor house in the English countryside, and it’s no surprise there are ghosts hanging around. But ghosts are something Rosemary can handle; she’s not so sure how to deal with her infuriatingly handsome leading man, who is all wrong for the role. Ellis Finch is a longtime Hollywood heartthrob with a secret of his own. He’s tired of playing the action movie hero and would much rather be gardening with his sweet dog, Fig. Frankly, he’s getting too old to maintain the industry’s standards of what a man should look like. Starring in a historical horror movie will be perfect for his new image, until he finds out that the author tried to get him kicked off the project, but Ellis won’t go down without a fight. Amidst filming the movie and the chemistry-filled feuding between Rosemary and Ellis, Hallowvale manor comes alive, literally. Trying to balance the mayhem of her writing deadlines, an adorable ghostly dog, and a pair of Regency-era women who are definitely nothing more than friends, Rosemary is at risk of telling Ellis her secret, or worse—falling for him.
My Thoughts:
I want to start off by saying that I don’t normally read age gap but this one wasn’t creepy. No one was a teenager, thank goodness. There is a lot of stuff going on with this plot with the FMC being able to see ghosts, a love story, a book being made into a film and the pressure of the FMC trying to finish her book. One thing I will say is that the ability to see ghosts didn’t seem like it was totally necessary to further the plot. It wasn’t tied into furthering the storyline that I could really tell. It was fun though! There’s a regency sapphic romance side story that’s pretty entertaining. This gives off cozy Halloween romcom vibes until you get to the spice scenes and then it goes all dom/sub. I didn’t see that coming AT ALL. I read a ton of dark romance, so it definitely didn’t phase me. It just sort of seemed to come out of nowhere. It was quite unexpected, I’ll say that. However, I did like both of the characters. They most certainly aren’t the typical rom-com characters. I enjoyed the fact that this book is LGBTQ friendly. Overall, it’s a cute spooky little romance that’s a cute read for the fall season.
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