Story for the Week
I love spooky season! To me, it’s not just about Halloween. It’s about the crispness in the air, the cooler temperatures, the changing colors on the trees. I love sleeping with the windows open and not having to run the heat or the air conditioning.
Fall is absolutely my favorite season in Chicagoland. I love almost everything about it. I will not touch anything pumpkin spice. And while I love the extra hour of sleep afforded to us when the clocks fall back to standard time like they did early this morning, I absolutely hate that the sun will be setting at 4:30 in a couple short months.
The biggest part of spooky season, of course, is Halloween—the “finale” of spooky season, if you will. Trick-or-treaters, fun size candy, kids in amazing costumes, teenagers with just a mask and a pillow case staying out of trouble. Now I’m not saying that there are never trouble makers on Halloween, but most of the time, I feel like it’s a positive experience.
When Corinne was small, I loved figuring out her costume and taking her out trick-or-treating, getting all of her Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Snickers (and anything else with a peanut warning). I didn’t like missing out on handing out candy though. You can’t leave a bowl out because some selfish kids will come by and take the whole thing. My solution…I took my own bag and handed out candy while we walked around the neighborhood. It truly was the best of both worlds.
Once she was old enough to decide on her own costume and take herself out, I missed seeing Corinne trick-or-treating, but I got to greet all the kids who came to our door. If the numbers were low, by the end of the night, kids would get a handful of candy. I like to have some left at the end of the night, but I certainly don’t need a huge bowl full if the weather was bad and nobody showed up.
Another thing that ties into spooky season for me is the horror genre—books and movies. That morphs into a love of haunted houses, which are really easy to come by this time of year.
The last couple of years, we’ve gone to a haunted prison at the old Illinois state prison location. They do a fantastic job. The first time, Corinne and I went by ourselves. Since we had never been, we had no idea whether it was even worth it. We just thought it would be something fun to do.
The funniest part was Corinne literally watching a character walk toward us and then being scared and screaming when he jumped up onto the half-wall in front of us. I asked her what she expected to happen and reminded her that they aren’t allowed to touch you, but she had no explanation. She’s kind of easy to startle (Do You Know If You’re a Fight or Flight Person?). I jumped a couple of times when I didn’t see someone hiding in the shadows, but more often than not, the scarier the better in my opinion.
Last year, for a special Friday the 13th weekend in June, we decided to take my brother-in-law Rodolfo and our friends Stephanie and Jakub. Again, we had a blast, and I learned that Jakub is much easier to scare than Corinne. 🤭
This year, we didn’t have time for spooky. Corinne didn’t even have time for the surprise birthday party we planned (and cancelled) this month. Between school and work, choir concerts and shows, flu/Covid shots, dentist appointments (and follow-up dentist appointments), there just weren’t any evenings or weekends to do anything spooky.
But Halloween falling on a Saturday, and the weather cooperating with an amazing fall day, made for a lot of hours of cute trick-or-treaters. We didn’t get as many as some years, so there’s lots of extra candy, but it still made for a nice day…even if I was recovering from the placement of two temporary crowns. 🦷🦷
The book reviewed below definitely includes some spooky, and the main characters even had a moment in a haunted house. “Sadie spun and buried her face against Ryan’s shoulder. What kind of scar-you-for-life attraction was this? Gus’s Ghostworks was a deceivingly innocent name for this kind of doll-demon, mind-terror shit. She sure hoped Eric was prepared to fund the therapy sessions she would need to ever sleep again.”
Sounds like my kind of spooky. 👻
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for Hate and Other Acts of Fiction by Megan Oliver
430 pages
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
Publication Date: November 10, 2026
I received an advance copy of this title from Berkley Publishing Group via NetGalley.
Publisher’s Description
Sadie Stockton has the almost-perfect job leading tours through the former home of her favorite author, the enigmatic recluse Hazel Wilmont. But when the owners of the Wilmont House announce plans to increase the estate’s revenue by hosting an overnight murder mystery set in a cocktail lounge, Sadie is less than thrilled. Yet again, Hazel’s legacy is being tarnished by the fictitious, decades-old rumors she poisoned her husband(s).
Worse? The new tour will mean working with none other than Ryan Pearson—local mixologist, owner of Pearson’s Pub Crawls, and Sadie’s long-standing professional rival and personal regret. She can’t stand him. Or his smug grin. Or his boastful T-shirt declaring his pub crawl the city’s number-one rated tour. And no, she doesn’t still think about their short-lived, meaningless college fling. Ever.
With a potential promotion on the line, Sadie must play nice with Ryan in order to make the “Mixtures & Murder” tour a success. But over late nights and cocktail tastings, all clues indicate a reigniting attraction between the two. And as new discoveries at the mansion unfold, Sadie is forced to confront her own narratives about Ryan, about Hazel, and about the past she’s tried for years to bury.
************
Main Characters:
- Sadie Stockton – 30 years old; tour director of the historical Wilmont House in Sutton Island, Georgia; her tour is the #2-rated tourist attraction; doesn’t believe in relationships after her father left her and her mother when she was a child; has a history with Ryan from college that she keeps to herself; isn’t crazy about the new overnight Mixtures & Murders tour suggested by the owner of the historical site
- Ryan Peterson – 30 years old, founder and owner of Peterson’s Pub Crawls which is the top-rated tour in Sutton Island, has a contentious relationship with his parents who don’t consider him successful, hired to create signature cocktails and help with the new Mixtures & Murder tour because his pub crawls are so popular
- Eric Andreas – 30 years old, owner of a bridal boutique after being a contestant on the TV reality series Runway Wars, Sadie works for Eric during the day, in a long-distance relationship with Charity since they met on Runway Wars
- Charity Chase – 28 years old, a supermodel who has started spending more time in Sutton Island with Eric
- Simon Winchester – a former actor in a production of Dinner and Demise, hired to create the Mixtures & Murder tour for Wilmont House
- Ann Stockton – Sadie’s mom, works 12-hour shifts at the local hospital, doesn’t have much of a social life outside of Monday-night dinners with Sadie
Hate and Other Acts of Fiction is a slightly spicy second-chance romance with an underlying mystery centered around the former owner of Wilmont House, children’s author Hazel Wilmont. Sadie grew up reading Hazel’s books as an escape and seems extremely protective of Hazel’s legacy. Her love of Hazel’s books is the reason Sadie directs tours of the Wilmont House in the evenings, even though she works during the day at her friend Eric’s bridal boutique.
Sadie’s love for Hazel Wilmont and her work at the Wilmont House is almost equal to her hatred of Ryan. Not only did they have a not-so-great history from college, he also runs the most popular tour in town and loves to make mention of it when he brings his tour group past the Wilmont House. It seems like anything Ryan does rubs Sadie the wrong way, and honestly, that’s one of the things in the book I wasn’t crazy about.
A second-chance romance is always going to have some friction. Ryan comes off as a sweet, charismatic guy who holds no ill will for Sadie. He is really easy to root for as the male lead character and seems pretty much oblivious to the reason that Sadie doesn’t like him. On the flip side, Sadie despises Ryan and will not hesitate to tell everyone she knows about how much she dislikes him even though she never tells anyone why. But she thinks nothing of using Ryan’s presence to her advantage when she needs to—like introducing him as her boyfriend to a guy she’s trying to brush off.
It took a while for me to really get into this, and I think I liked the mystery aspect of it more than the romance. The murder mystery tour creation forces Sadie and Ryan to work together, and Simon plays a great third wheel along the way. There’s even an underlying mystery about Hazel herself, long since deceased, with clues discovered around the house while the team works to create the tour. I wish those pieces had been further developed, and I think this could have been better as a cozy mystery with the romance as a backdrop because that’s when the story really took hold with the mysteries of an old house and the rumors about Hazel.
I do think the biggest reason I struggled to really get into it is Sadie. She has a nice character arc by the end of the book and there is definitely childhood trauma she needs to work though, but she can be a truly vile person through much of the story. There’s really not a lot to like about her at the beginning. I lost a lot of patience with her, and it made it difficult for me to see her as a good fit for Ryan because he always gives her the benefit of the doubt.
As light shone down on the cramped, cluttered space, the unmistakable click of the doorknob catching the latch made her stomach drop.
Spinning, she loudly demanded, “Don’t let that door close!” though it was too late.
“What? Why?” Ryan asked with reactive alarm.
“The knob gets jammed from the inside.” She pushed past him, barely able to thread herself between his body and a stack of plastic totes labeled CHRISTMAS in red Sharpie. “If you’re in this room, never let the door close.”
“A little warning would have been nice.”
Reaching for the knob, Sadie hoped this would be the exception and not the rule. But she met resistance immediately. Shit.
“Well, I hope you’re happy,” she sighed, turning and squaring off against Ryan. “Now we’re stuck here. Why would you close the door?”
“I didn’t close the door. I just didn’t prevent the door from closing. There’s a difference. And how are we stuck? Knobs don’t randomly not work for no reason.”
Irritation spewed from her lips. “Please, please mansplain to me how this house works. I’ve only spent nearly every day here for the past five years.”
“Then I’d think you’d know where a tape measure would be,” he mumbled flatly.
Don’t even get me started on how she treats her mother and her mother’s friends.
I did really like the story itself, and the writing is solid. Oliver has a nice style and pacing. I just really didn’t like Sadie. I get that I’m probably not supposed to, but there is a definite line between a character being a little unlikeable and being a complete b***h to the people who love her.
All in all, this is a solid second novel by Megan Oliver, and I will likely take a chance on her again in the future.
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