Eloise had hoped to spend the next year in grad school studying literature, but life took an unexpected turn. Her grandmother passed away and left her estate to Eloise and her two sisters. They are required to renovate the estate into a Bed and Breakfast while at least one of them lives on the island and oversees the project. As the sister with no job and no plans, Eloise is the one to stay and work with Jake, Gran’s lawyer and neighbor.

Emma St. Clair and Jenny Proctor are a couple of my favorite authors at the moment so I was very interested in reading this book that they’ve written together. I read that they wrote every other chapter and agreed that they could change what the other wrote if they weren’t loving it, so when they were going back through it, they couldn’t tell for sure who had written which parts. Impressive! I’ve never been great at group projects so I can’t even imagine that!

Eloise and the Grump Next Door was a cute romance read. You know I love these types of stories. The characters were fun–I especially loved all the Oakley Island residents and their interest in each other’s lives. The barber has a TikTok account where he posts all the juicy gossip. The community was really sweet. It made me want to live there. I thought Jake was a confusing character though. He was 11 years older than Eloise, so between their age difference and the fact that he was her grandmother’s lawyer, he felt the need to keep things professional between them regardless of his attraction to her. That made sense. But then he flipped that switch so fast I got whiplash! I don’t recall any reasoning for his change of heart. One minute he can’t get away from her fast enough, the next he’s cuddling her on the couch while watching a movie with his nephew. If I was Eloise, I’d need more of an explanation before any cuddling could happen. Though this is a ‘no spice’ romance, there is plenty of ogling going on and moments of nudity that weren’t necessarily spicy but it felt like a little higher on the scale of ‘no spice’ so just be aware of that. I do think they set us up for the next book pretty well though. I do think I’ll keep reading the series.