What better way to fall in love than by running through the halls of a haunted house together? I have been absolutely sleeping on the horrormance subgenre, which combines—you guessed it!—horror and romance. At first glance, you might think these genres are complete opposites and wouldn’t blend well. But when you think about it some more, it makes sense: Both horror and romance are about putting characters in extreme situations to explore particular emotions at their heights. If I Stopped Haunting You, a debut horrormance by Colby Wilkens that came out in October, has completely sold me on the genre combo!
Penelope Skinner is an indigenous horror author who lost momentum after her debut novel. But her career really hit rock bottom when she got into a heated argument with rival author Neil Storm at a conference and threw a book at his head. In the months since, she’s been hiding away in shame, sure that she’ll be a pariah in the publishing world forever. But when one of the few friends that stuck by her invites her to a writing retreat at a haunted Scottish castle, Pen can’t pass up the chance to try to rediscover her writing spark. Of course, when she arrives, who else is there but the annoyingly handsome Neil Storm? Can they spend a week stuck in a castle together without any more violent outbursts? Neil has also been suffering from writer’s block. Pen’s words about him selling out to the white publishing world and creating depictions of Native characters that only serve to perpetuate stereotypes hit him harder than the book that left a scar on his forehead. Could this be his chance to find his voice again and take inspiration from Pen’s bold example? And then there are the ghosts. The housekeeper warned them of the castle’s dark history, but Pen and Neil seem to be the only ones experiencing anything supernatural in the castle. From glowing eyes in the cellar to a figure in white drifting through the halls at night, it’s clear that the original inhabitants of the castle have not found peace. Can Pen and Neil put aside their differences long enough to figure out who these spirits are and what they want before someone gets hurt?
The horror and romance combination works so well because both are trope-heavy genres, and sometimes their tropes are just two different sides of the same coin. Take, for example, the snow storm that keeps the crew trapped in the castle, so that neither Pen nor Neil can cut and run when things get tense. In the horror genre, such storms are a common literary technique to create isolation—cutting characters off from the outside world so they can’t escape or call for help. But in the romance world, we call this “forced proximity”—Pen and Neil are stuck spending time together in close quarters. And wouldn’t you know, familiarity breeds fondness. The two main characters are also brought closer together by their shared experience of the hauntings. They decide not to tell the other writers on the retreat about the ghosts because they are afraid of not being believed. Instead, their spooky experiences become a shared secret that they can only discuss with each other.
In other ways, the horror and romance elements truly are opposites, serving to balance each other out. Whenever Pen or Neil have a close call with a ghost that gets their adrenaline rushing and blood pumping, as soon as they reach safety, they can redirect those passions. On the flip side, whenever the story starts getting too cute and cozy, you know a haunting is about to spice things up. The back-and-forth between the ghost story and romance plots keeps the pacing moving quickly and keeps the mood dynamic.
Lastly, I can never pass up a text within a text. Since this is a story about a writing retreat, it wouldn’t be complete without a taste of each author’s writings. Though I think Julia Bartz’s The Writing Retreat used this technique to far better effect, If I Stopped Haunting You does include snippets from the published novels of Pen, Neil, and one of the other authors on the retreat to complement the main story. It perhaps would have fit better to show excerpts of their works in progress, but as you might imagine, neither Pen nor Neil were getting much writing done between the drama of their love life and the hauntings.…
I discovered after reading this book that there has been some controversy recently over whether the author Colby Wilkens truly has the Native ancestry she initially claimed. While I never want to police an author’s identity, there have been several concerning cases lately of authors co-opting marginalized identities to garner book deals and clout. Ultimately, I can’t really speak to this issue or the Native representation in the book, but I did enjoy the way this book blended the horror and romance genres. You can find If I Stopped Haunting You on shelves now at your favorite local retailer or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Feel free to let me know your thoughts or share other horromance recommendations in the comments!