A sassy booklover, a supervillain cosplayer, and one beachy small town. Beatrice McKinney has always been prickly, but things have gone from bad to worse since she moved back home to Del Mar and started working at her dad’s law firm. It wouldn’t be so bad if Mike Benedick, a cosplayer at her brother’s escape room, hadn’t gotten under Bea’s skin—calling her a cactus, flirting, daring her to dream of a life she doesn’t have to escape with copious amounts of fiction. Bea may hate the messenger, but she can’t ignore the message.
Burned out but determined to build a life she loves, Bea quits her job and moves into a place of her own—a charming beach cottage in La Jolla with a landlord who has the most impressive collection of lovingly annotated books Bea has ever seen. She’d sign a lease just to meet this smart, thoughtful soul. She can certainly overlook the fact that the cottage shares a lot with a beach house that is currently under renovation. A little dust and noise are no big deal, especially if it means Bea might see more of her mysterious, intriguing landlord.
Just one problem: Mike Benedick is Bea’s landlord, and he’s living in the beach house during the renovations. Now Bea has to live next door to a man she loathes in real life but has fallen hard for in the margins of fiction.
Storymakers
