Love at First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: age-gap romance, contemporary romance, ghosts, paranormal romance, spicy romance
Pages: 360
Published by Dell on September 16, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
In this cosy and spicy paranormal 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 spooky mansion filled with ghosts, from the author of Best Hex Ever.
Rosemary is a successful horror author with a secret: she can see ghosts. So when the set of her hit novel’s film adaptation turns out to be a haunted countryside manor, she’s unfazed. What she’s less prepared for is the maddeningly handsome, completely miscast actor playing her leading man.
Ellis is a Hollywood heartthrob tired of his action-hero persona. Instead, he dreams of being a serious actor, and having free time to spend gardening with his dog. Landing the lead in a historical horror movie is his chance to start fresh… until he discovers the author tried to have him replaced.
But as filming progresses, and the manor's ghosts make their presence known, the chemistry between Rosemary and Ellis becomes undeniable. With secrets being spilled, sparks flying, and spirits stirring up trouble, can they face their demons and write themselves a happily-ever-after before it's a wrap?
My Review:
The blurb for this book, while it isn’t exactly wrong, isn’t right either. Those elements are all there, but, if I were saying this aloud I’d be saying that the “accent is on a different syllable” but with “syllable” pronounced with its accent in the wrong place. Verbally, the difference is clear, even though it sounds like it might be subtle in description.
That’s true of the blurb for this book as well. The picture of Rosemary Shaw that we get from the blurb is exactly right as far as it goes – although it’s just the surface. She IS a successful horror writer and she CAN see ghosts. She’s certainly unfazed by the ghosts that haunt the haunted filming location. But she is plenty fazed by being part of the filming of her novel. And not just because of the maddeningly handsome Ellis Finch.
Ellis’ description is the one that gets shortchanged – by a lot and by all the important bits. Rosemary believed that he was miscast because her protagonist is a brooding Victorian, and she was expecting someone a bit thin and weedy – at least in her head. Ellis’ career has been confined to and defined by his action hero roles. On screen he doesn’t appear to have either the looks or the range for the part, but then he’s an actor and both looks and actions can be deceiving with the right costumes and lighting.
He’s also being blackmailed by his agent to take all those action-hero roles, no matter how much he’s come to hate them. AND just how much he needs to start branching out now that he’s over 40 and the clock on him credibly being an action hero is starting to tick fairly loudly.
The chemistry between Rosemary and Ellis IS absolutely undeniable – no matter how much they each try, and ultimately fail, to deny it. However much they are utterly perfect for each other, in ways that neither of them is initially willing to even reveal in the early stages of their attraction, the private little bubble they manage to create around themselves in their semi-isolated filming location is sure to burst once the real world intrudes.
And it does, with the kind of vengeance that seems designed to tear them apart – only because it is. There’s a money-grubbing devil Agent whispering into Ellis’ ear that if he doesn’t publicly give Rosemary up – for her own good – that damaging publicity will be unleashed to do it for him.
Escape Rating B-: First of all, it was driving me crazy that I was sure that I recently read a book where the writer protagonist had the same variety of writer’s block that Rosemary has in this story – and I had and it’s Stacy Sivinski’s The Witching Moon Manor (Which I loved and HIGHLY recommend). I was equally certain that I recently read an entirely different book where the male protagonist is being blackmailed by his agent/or boss in a similar way to what Ellis is going through. I think it might be First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison but it if is, HIS workplace manipulator isn’t evil, just persistent and honestly does have the character’s best interests at heart along with their own – and not just their own as occurs in this story. (If it isn’t First-Time Caller, and you know what the book really is, please let me know!)
Now that I’ve got THAT off my chest, so to speak, let’s talk about the book. Initially, I enjoyed this A LOT. Rosemary, with her writer’s block, her social anxiety, and her positive but still sometimes hiding under the covers attitude about her life, her perfect-for-her but not size 0 body, her quirks, her kinks, and just everything about her, including her ghosts, was just terrific.
I loved the way that she felt the fear and did so much anyway, including being a fish out of water at the shoot for the movie made out of her book. And her besties are to die for in all the best ways.
Not to mention, the romance between Rosemary and Ellis is seriously smoking hot. When they manage to keep the world and all of its villains out of their business, they are fantastic together, in bed and out.
The story also hits on some lovely themes and side stories, especially the sidebar about the two Regency-era ghosts who, even after literal centuries of friendship, need a bit of an intervention as well as a package of 21st century sapphic romances to finally admit that the reason they’re still haunting the house is because they’ve been in love with each other all along.
While the ghost dog hanging around Ellis Finch and still playing with his best doggie buddy even from the afterlife was adorable and gave me the weepies.
Which leads us right back to Ellis, because that’s where my issues with the story come in. They’re not the same issues Rosemary had with his casting, but they are all about the reasons that Rosemary had such issues.
Ellis is taking all those action-hero roles that he hates BECAUSE he is being blackmailed into the roles with the biggest paycheck by his agent, who is an abusive bastard of the first order. He’s even worse because he does all his manipulations from the sidelines and never appears in person. He’s such a slimeball that calling him a slimeball is insulting to other slimeballs because he’s giving them a worse name than even slimeballs deserve.
Howsomever, just as much as Ellis is being manipulated by this asshat – and EVERYBODY in the industry seems to know it – Ellis is, OMG I can’t even with his attitude. He just keeps letting it happen and going along and I just didn’t buy the whole thing. Ellis is the one who makes the money – not his agent. His secret, that he’s bisexual, isn’t all that big a deal now that his career is well-established. And, more importantly, Ellis is the one who makes the money, not Agent Brody the douchecanoe. That arsehole is too selfish to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, even out of spite.
But Ellis is a doormat, and he blows the whole thing up in his head so BIG that I got just-plain tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop but when I finally reached the end to see WTF it turned out to be a big buildup to not very much and that downgraded the story for me.
Not that Brody doesn’t try to do his damndest to keep Ellis under his control, and not that he doesn’t turn out to be really evil about doing it. But even at that extreme point his evil is about keeping Ellis working for him and not burning the career that is paying his fat percentages into the ground.
That letdown at the end, which was entirely too close to shifting the story into a misunderstandammit, is the reason why I’m still really bummed about it all because I started out liking it quite a bit and now my feelings are very mixed.
Your reading mileage may, and hopefully will, vary.
