Not a Fun Halloween Romance

I don’t know quite what to think about this book. The title, the cover, and even the blurb suggest a light-hearted Halloween romance. But it is not. The heroine seems a little quirky in her first scene with the woman who runs the literary college where she works. Things start to go off the rails just about as soon as she leaves this meeting. All of a sudden, the heroine comes across as someone with a rather bizarre OCD that was initially triggered by what we later find out is childhood trauma around Halloween. She also has a rather bizarre relationship with her younger brother that is not healthy. In fact, as a story unwinds, the heroine definitely appears to be a few candy corns short of a Halloween treat bag, and as such, I just couldn’t picture her as a romantic heroine. The author took the backstory a bit too far for the heroine to be believable and relatable. I did like the literary aspect of this town; I always love writerly and bookish elements in novels. I enjoyed the relationship between the heroine, who is a Gothic literature professor, and the man who owns the horror book shop in town. if you’re looking for a fun little Halloween romance, this isn’t it.