I loved the other Renn Faire themed books by Jen DeLuca and I was so excited to see her debut a new series! Boneyard Key jumps off the page as somewhere I'd love to visit or live. The characters are so kind and caring, and the supernatural twist was fantastic. Also, I loved that it took the time to question ghost stories!

This is the first book i’ve read by Jen DeLuca and it’s just the perfect Small-Town Paranormal romance. I loved Nick and Cassie’s chemistry! Loved Cassie’s journey of self discovery and her true independence. I loved the slow burn, the coffee shop and of course Elmer! Can’t wait to revisit Boneyard Key again!

As a fan of the author's renaissance fair series, I was not disappointed by the start of this new era. The author did a great job of building an exciting new world full of characters that readers will certainly come to love.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was an easy read. Quick, fun and a little spooky. The spookiness slightly overtook the romance in my opinion, but it was still lovey. The twist was a little predictable but overall, it was exactly what I expected out of this book..

This is the perfect read if you’re looking for some spooky vibes in the summer. It had me wanting to move to a haunted small town and marry the owner of the local coffee shop. The romance was cute but actually pretty mild until the end, but I mostly loved the paranormal aspects. There are all kinds of ghosts hanging around the town and they all have their different quirks and personalities which made for a really fun read. There’s also a great mystery involving a town legend and the infamous cottage the MC Cassie moves into. All around a really cute and cozy read which would be great for both the summer and spooky seasons.

Thank you to Berkeley for the ARC!

First, thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this early. I enjoyed this but I found the ghost elements of this story to be a lot more exciting than the romance aspect. I did realise what was happening before it was revealed. LOVED the magnetic poetry bit.

You would be making a ~grave~ mistake by not checking out this cozy paranormal romance by cozy romance queen Jen DeLuca.

Her Willow Creek renfaire series are among my favorite cozy romances and Boneyard Key is (hopefully) the start to a new series. She has a knack for worldbuilding and quirky, likeable characters. The romance was very slowburn, and that's okay, because there was more focus on the uniquie paranormal twist. I haven't read anything quite like this, but I am ~dying~ to read more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

You've heard about friends not liking the person you're dating, but have you heard of your house hating them? When Cassie found a house for cheap in the small floridian town known for their ghosts...... for tourists, she never anticipated the house would come with a roommate. Cassie learns the hard way not all gimmicks are gimmicks and soon she has to convince her house to like Nick and actually let him inside peacefully.

Thank you to Netgalley, Jen Deluca and Berkley Publishing for the ARC of this novel!

🎬Pairing: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
Seaside cottage? ✔️Cantankerous ghost? ✔️ Strong willed FMC? ✔️ There are several similarities from the movie to this novel, but also, I just really love this film and not enough people have seen it. Read this book and watch this movie.

🎵Pairing: “Florida!!!” by Taylor Swift. feat. Florence and the Machine
“Well, me and my ghosts, we had a hell of a time/Yes, I'm haunted but I'm feeling just fine.” Florence’s lyrics along with the title of the song are 🤌. This was a Hallmark style cozy paranormal romance.

📖quote: “Y’all done even have a Publix way out here. There is nothing better in this world than a chicken tender Pub Sub. Toss the tenders in buffalo sauce, add some lettuce, peppers, tomato, and onion, a little squeeze of ranch dressing on top.” Cassie and I have nearly identical Pub Sub orders! That makes her okay in my book. Deluca was not born here and no longer lives here, but as a third generation Floridian, I have decided to bequeath the title of “True Floridian” to Jen Deluca. Florida gets a lot of hate. It was refreshing to read a love story set in a place that I love.

Loves:
❤️Outside of the numerous Publix references, I found joy in the names created for the shops/restaurants in Boneyard Key: I Scream Ice Cream, The Cold Spot, The Haunt. Love it!
❤️ I love Cassie as a character.
❤️Found Family

Issues:
👉The MMC? Meh. He was supposed to be all sweet and sensitive and then described a female character as b*tch 👎🏻
👉There were a few missed opportunities in the narrative with the ghosts/possession aspect. I am not saying that I wanted super sinister, but slightly sinister would have added more tension and made the climax seem more high-stakes. As it is, it was quick and wrapped up nicely with a bow, which some people will love. I prefer a little more mess before the clean-up
👉There was a feminist point to this novel. Up until the climax, it was subtle and well done. However, when it came to the climax, the dialogue was a bit overly explanatory and felt overdone/on the nose.

Final Thoughts
💭 This is a versatile book in the fact that it could be a summer read or an October read.
💭 If you have love of Florida (and Publix), of meddlesome ghosts, and a low-spice romance, go ahead and add this to your TBR until August 13, 2024!

This review will be shared on my Goodreads, and a version of it will be posted to my Instagram: thebooksnuggery

Jen DeLuca, please don't stop writing small town romances as long as you possibly can. I am a massive fan of the Well Matched series and was foaming at the mouth with I got to read Haunted Ever After. Not only was the romance addicting, but so was the ghost story and town itself. Boneyard Key is a character itself and I cannot wait to read more from this town and series. Love you so much Jen DeLuca <33

I have been a massive Jen DeLuca fan since Well Met-- dare I say, Well Met is one of the 2 books that brought me back to reading and made me the avid rom com reader I am today? So naturally, I was so excited to be approved for an ARC of Haunted Ever After.

In this book we have Cassie, who has recently moved to the ghostly town of Boneyard Key. And while she thinks the ghosts are a cute tourist trope, they end up being more real than she ever imagined. Not to mention it seems she lives in the most haunted house in the town. She immediately connects with Nick, local coffee shop owner, who has lived his whole life in Boneyard Key.

I absolutely adored the premise of this book. I like hauntings and ghosts and cute romance and I love seeing them smartly and funnily combined together as DeLuca does here. My favorite thing about this book is that the main plot was centered around the hauntings of Boneyard Key and Cassie's house. The whole plot didn't completely live and die by the romance of Cassie and Nick. This meant that the love story was a lot less tropey and a lot less predictable. You know how every rom com has a "big fight" or something at the end? This one didn't, and I LOVED that. There was a climax but it wasn't about their love for each other. I liked not being able to map out the whole plotline for once. The humor was great, Cassie and Nick were great, and the supporting characters were fun too. I wouldn't be opposed to DeLuca bringing us back to Boneyard Key in the future.

I think the only downside was that it just lacked a little... something. It didn't quite have the magic of Well Met to me. The romance between Nick and Cassie felt a little "insta-lovey" to me, and I wasn't huge on that. And then it just didn't seem to go too far past the surface. I wanted to care a little bit more about the characters themselves than I did.

All in all, really enjoyed this one and think it's a great read for people to pick up in the prelude to Spooky Season! Thank you for the ARC-- greatly appreciated it!

Jen Deluca delivers a strong start to what I think will be a great new series!

She brings her trademark wit and charm to a haunted seaside town in Florida filled with compelling characters. I loved both Cassie and Nick and how their slow burn romance unfolded. At times romance took a back seat to the ghostly goings on of the town, but I found there to be a refreshing mix of the two storylines. I'm looking forward to seeing which side characters the next book will focus on. My guess is on Sophie and Theo, which should be fun. I highly recommend this light-heartedly spooky story!

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC. The synopsis for this sounded right up my alley, but it was kind of a letdown. I felt absolutely zero chemistry between the FMC & MMC. When reading a romance novel, I'm usually on the edge of my seat waiting for the main characters to kiss for the first time, and when these two did I was like.. y'all haven't even bonded yet? There was no connection between them. The haunted house aspect + ghosts were the best parts of this book, but the romance was seriously lacking. This might be enjoyable to some, but it wasn't my cup of tea.

When Cassie bought her house in Boneyard Key on impulse, she had no idea that the small Florida town, dubbed the "most haunted town" in Florida, truly lived up to its name. Her problem? She bought the notorious Hawkins house, a home that had been empty since Mean Mrs. Hawkins died in the 40s. Nick, on the other hand, embraces the ghostliness of his hometown, including his spectral roommate, Elmer, who once owned the coffee shop Nick owns. I absolutely adore Jen DeLuca's writing and fell in love with her previous series. She is one of my top auto-buy authors for a reason and this book just confirmed it. I loved everything about it and wish I could visit this place! I can't wait for the next book in this series!

This was a fun fall rom-com and perfect for spooky season. I really enjoyed that the town of Boneyard Key is part kitschy tourist trap and part legitimately haunted. Also so cool that some descendants of the founding families have some kind of paranormal ability which helps with the actual haunted houses/ghosts. This had such a fun meet cute with a bad first impression that gets remedied pretty quickly and you can’t go wrong with a haunted house with a ghost that is just misunderstood. I loved all the fun ghosts and whole town was just really great and just had a great family feel to it. This was such a fast and cozy read.

Thanks to Berkley and Netgalley for the complimentary copy of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.

I am a huge fan of Jen DeLuca's Well Met series and Haunted Ever After explores a new setting and maintains what is her signature charm. The town of Boneyard Key is part kitschy tourist trap and part legitimately haunted town and completely delightful. Cassie is a strong independent woman who moves to this town to get a bit of a fresh start. Nick is the owner of the local coffee shop and who was born an raised in this quirky little town. The townsfolk, both the living and the not so living are a wonderful ensemble cast with a solid found family feel. She seems to be laying some groundwork to make this a series.

This book is set during the summer in a beachy town, and could totally satisfy a summer beach read craving. For me, it felt like a hunkering under blankets, drinking hot cider, and willing fall to come book. I read Well Met every year at the beginning of summer, and I feel like this will be the book I pick up when I'm ready to transition into the fall. I highly recommend it for whatever season it may be. It's a cozy read, yes there are ghosts, but they are friendly ghosts, mostly. Cannot wait for everyone to get a change to read this one.

Thank you to Jen DeLuca, Berkley Romance, and NetGalley for this ARC, I was overjoyed to be selected for this one and it was everything I hoped it would be.

In every small town, there's That One House. The one everyone avoids, the one even kids trick-or-treating won't stop at for candy, the one that can't seem to attract or keep an owner. Of course, that's the house newcomer Cassie moves into in seaside Boneyard Key, Florida. And, just her luck, she seems to get off on the wrong foot with the local coffee shop barista right from the start. It's an especially untenable situation for Cassie since her outlets don't seem to be working in her house, which means no power to her laptop or her coffee maker! For his part, Nick may not appreciate customers hogging a table, an outlet, and his wifi without ordering, but he can't deny that there is something very attractive about his new neighbor.

Boneyard Key leans in hard on its reputation as a haunted town. Cartoon ghosts decorate signs and shopfronts, and business names wink and nod in the direction of this reputation. When a local walking ghost tour pauses in front of Cassie's home one evening, she starts to wonder how much of the town's haunting stories are real and how much has been made up to attract and capture tourism dollars. Nick introduces Cassies to a few of the town's resident ghosts, and Cassie just might have a spooky roommate of her own. As she and Nick grow closer, Cassie needs to figure out if this small town is where she'll stay--and if the spirit of the home's first owner will allow it!

HAUNTED EVER AFTER is a fun read featuring sweet romance, humor, and just a touch of ghostly menace. The book felt a little long in some places, and the story dragged its feet at times. Overall, though, Jen DeLuca's latest contemporary romance was rather enjoyable.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for the advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I received a free copy of this book thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group; all opinions expressed are exclusively my own.

This is a cute, cozy read with some deep cuts to give it depth. If you like your supernatural with a side of cozy coffee shop vibes (or vice versa), this is a solid read. Easy recommend!

For sensitive readers, there are ghosts, references to death, references to unhealthy/abusive relationships, and some sexuality.

I wasn’t a fan of this one, unfortunately. I did not finish. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for gifting me this arc.

I loved Jen DeLuca's renaissance series (shamefully haven't read the last book yet) and this new book didn't disappoint! I'm glad it had a soft ghostie vibe instead of something supremely haunted. I don't mind being scared, but that's not the vibe this gave off when I decided to read it, so I'm glad expectations were met. I do think some of ghostie moments were cheesy, but that's alright. I liked Cassie and Nick's chemistry and I loved Cassie's independence and rediscovery of herself in this book. I think she's at a similar point in life to me and it felt so relatable. Part of Nick's story also felt relatable, it was a good mix.