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Verdict: A cozy paranormal sapphic romance about a witch hired to haunt, not banish, a small-town bed-and-breakfast — genuinely moving on grief and found family, held back for some advance readers by chemistry that takes a while to land.
Best for: Readers who want a low-stakes cozy paranormal setting carrying real emotional weight, and who don’t need instant, all-consuming chemistry to stay invested.
Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — open-door but not explicit, per advance readers; romance.io has no entry yet)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.0/5 — a 4.15 average from advance readers ahead of the September 8 release)
Tropes: Dislike-to-love, workplace romance, forced proximity, found family, slow burn, single POV, grief and healing, cozy paranormal, small-town setting, standalone HEA.
With All My Haunted Heart by Isabel Sterling is a standalone adult sapphic paranormal romance from Berkley, publishing September 8, 2026 — a cozy, small-town story about a witch hired to fake a haunting at a bed-and-breakfast and the co-owner she was not supposed to fall for.
Because the book has not published yet, this review is built entirely on advance readers: it carries a 4.15 average across 137 Goodreads ratings and 112 written reviews, plus a 4.13 average and a 2% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph — genuinely strong numbers for a pre-release title. The praise is close to consensus. The one real fault line is narrower: whether the central chemistry ignites early enough. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you preorder.
What Is With All My Haunted Heart About?
With All My Haunted Heart is a sapphic paranormal romance and a cozy one — small-town, low body count, a magic system that runs on study and ethics rather than raw power. Perpetua “Pippa” Ainsley Erikson is a working witch losing clients to a cut-rate DIY-magic shop across town, estranged from a conservative family who stripped her of the family name over how she practices. She has learned to rely on herself, and the book stays entirely inside her point of view.
Louie “Elle” Thompson is the opposite kind of problem: unfairly attractive, guarded for reasons the book takes its time revealing, and — along with Pippa’s best friend Xander — the new co-owner of a historic B&B. Pippa is hired to inspect the place for ghosts. Elle wants the opposite: not an exorcism, but a haunting, deliberate and marketable. The single first-person POV keeps the story locked to Pippa’s read on Elle rather than splitting the difference, which is what makes Elle’s slow reveal work as a reveal at all.
What Makes This Cozy Sapphic Paranormal Romance Work
- Magic as a craft, not a power fantasy: Advance readers repeatedly single out that Pippa’s witchcraft runs on research, ethics and preparation rather than effortless spellcasting — a specific, recurring compliment rather than generic worldbuilding praise.
- The haunting premise: A witch hired to manufacture a ghost, rather than banish one, gives the plot an actual engine instead of a backdrop — described as “such a unique premise” by more than one reviewer.
- Grief handled without whiplash: The tonal turn from cozy to heavy — centered on child death and terminal illness — is the element advance readers name most consistently as the book’s real achievement, and several specifically credit the author’s own note on personal loss for the weight it carries.
- Found family over a repaired one: The book lets Pippa’s biological family stay unrepaired while her chosen circle does the actual healing, which readers flag as more honest than a tidy reconciliation.
- A very low did-not-finish rate: 2% on StoryGraph across 55 reviews — whatever else divides advance readers, almost everyone who starts it finishes it.
Book Synopsis
Pippa Ainsley is watching her small witchcraft business bleed clients to a new DIY-magic shop that sells cheaper, unpredictable crystals and herbal blends to anyone willing to gamble on them. So when her best friend Xander asks her to inspect the historic bed-and-breakfast he has just bought, she does not think twice — a straightforward ghost-clearing job, the kind of work that pays.
Except Xander’s co-owner does not want the ghosts gone. Elle Thompson wants Pippa to give the place a haunting, deliberately, to give the B&B an edge over every other inn in town. It is exactly the kind of experimental magic Pippa has spent her career avoiding — unpredictable, ethically murky, the sort of job that could cost her the reputation she has left. But Elle is persistent, the money would save both their businesses, and Pippa has never been able to resist a genuinely interesting problem.
What she has not accounted for is Elle herself — guarded, sharp, carrying something she has not explained — or how fast the professional distance between them starts to erode once they are spending every evening testing which parts of an old house will hold a manufactured haunting and which parts already do.
My Review
What advance readers keep coming back to first is the premise itself, and it earns that reaction. A witch hired to build a haunting rather than clear one flips the genre’s most familiar setup, and Sterling follows through on the idea rather than treating it as a hook: the magic runs on research and consequence, Pippa studies and prepares rather than waving a hand, and more than one reader specifically credits the crystal-based mechanics for feeling considered rather than decorative.
The second real strength is the emotional register underneath the cozy surface. This is not a light book pretending to have stakes — grief, terminal illness and a family estrangement run through it, and advance readers who otherwise disagree about the romance agree almost unanimously that the handling of loss is the book’s strongest material. Several single out Sterling’s author’s note, which discloses that part of the story draws on a personal loss, as the thing that recontextualizes the whole read once you reach it.
Where advance readers split is the central relationship, and it is a genuine divide rather than one loud outlier. A meaningful minority — including at least two independent reviewers — describe the chemistry between Pippa and Elle as underdeveloped, reading closer to friendship than attraction, with the turn from tension to attraction happening faster than the groundwork justifies. One reviewer also flagged that the book leans on nicknames for nearly every major character (Pippa/Perpetua, Elle/Louie, Xander/Alex), which pulled her out of the story at points. Set against that, other readers report the opposite experience just as specifically — “authentic,” “rewarding,” a slow burn that only looks fast because it happens inside a single month. Both readings are represented often enough that neither should be dismissed as an outlier.
One expectation worth resetting going in: this is marketed as cozy, and advance readers confirm it stays cozy in tone even while it takes grief seriously. Nobody in the reviews I found flags on-page horror, graphic violence or a bleak ending — the heaviness sits in loss and estrangement, not in the haunting itself. If you want the atmosphere of a ghost story without the dread, that balance is exactly the draw; if you were hoping for something scarier, calibrate accordingly.
My honest note: A strong, specific premise carried by real craft on the magic system and the grief, with a romance that lands soundly for most advance readers and noticeably softer for a real minority. If you need instant chemistry to stay hooked, watch for that; if a slower, more contested burn doesn’t bother you, everything else here is working.
| Element | In With All My Haunted Heart |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Pippa Ainsley & Elle Thompson — working witch and B&B co-owner, dislike-to-love, forced proximity |
| Core tropes | Dislike-to-love, workplace romance, forced proximity, found family, slow burn, single POV |
| Setting | A historic small-town bed-and-breakfast, contemporary cozy paranormal |
| Heat level | 3/5 — open-door but not explicit, per advance readers |
| Series | Standalone — Sterling’s adult debut after a completed YA trilogy |
| Content notes | Graphic: child death, terminal illness, grief. Moderate: sexual content, death, drug use. Minor: cancer, child abuse, car accident (StoryGraph, crowd-sourced) |
How Spicy Is With All My Haunted Heart?
Call it a 3/5. The book has not been out long enough to earn a romance.io entry, so this comes from advance-reader consensus instead: two independent reviewers who read the ARC describe two to three open-door or fade-to-black scenes that stay creative and plot-integrated rather than explicit, with one putting the heat at “about a 3/5, some may say 2.5/5.” Nobody treats the spice as a headline feature the way an explicit-band romance would.
Nothing beyond that is flagged as a content concern in the scenes themselves — no reviewer raises a consent question or names a specific kink. The heavier content to know about in advance sits elsewhere, in the grief and child-death material covered in the element table above. For the same open-door-not-explicit band with a review on this site, see The Honey Witch and The Last Caspian.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want a cozy paranormal setting that still takes grief seriously, you enjoy magic systems built on research and ethics rather than raw power, you read for found family over patched-up biological family, and you don’t need the romance to ignite in the first act.
You may want to skip it if: you need immediate, undeniable chemistry between the leads, multiple nicknames for the same characters pull you out of a story, you want your cozy paranormal kept light throughout, or you’re specifically shopping for a high-heat read.
In short: a well-built cozy premise with real emotional weight, and a central romance that a real minority of advance readers found didn’t fully ignite.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)
With All My Haunted Heart does not publish until September 8, 2026, so there is no general-reader discourse yet — no BookTok wave, no Reddit recommendation threads, no trade reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly or Library Journal that a search turns up. What exists instead is a real and fairly substantial NetGalley ARC readership: 112 written Goodreads reviews and 55 on StoryGraph, a live Goodreads giveaway for 50 Kindle copies, and six advance-praise blurbs from other romance authors on the book’s Amazon listing, all specific to this title rather than recycled from Sterling’s YA work. That ARC volume, this far ahead of a pub date, is itself a signal the publisher is pushing the title.
Prefer audio? Listen to With All My Haunted Heart on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The magic-as-craft system comes up first and most consistently — readers name the crystal work specifically rather than praising “the worldbuilding” in the abstract. The grief material is the second recurring theme, with Sterling’s author’s note about a personal loss singled out by name in multiple reviews as the thing that deepens the whole book in hindsight. Found family and the handling of an unrepaired biological family draw real, specific praise rather than a passing mention. A minority of readers name the prose itself as a highlight, which is notable because it sits opposite the one recurring craft complaint below.
What readers argue about and complain about: Chemistry, above everything else that gets raised as a complaint. Multiple independent reviewers describe the connection between Pippa and Elle as underdeveloped — “I just didn’t feel a big enough connection between them,” one writes — and say the romance reads closer to friendship than attraction for a stretch of the book. Second: character legibility, specifically the triple-naming convention (Pippa/Perpetua, Elle/Louie, Xander/Alex), which at least one reviewer says made it harder to track who was who. Third, from a single but specific voice: a tendency toward em-dash-heavy prose that occasionally breaks reading rhythm — “I found myself noticing the punctuation more than the story” — though the same reviewer still rated the book five stars overall. None of these rises to the level of a dominant complaint the way a single flaw sometimes does on this site; they are real but genuinely minority findings against a strongly positive aggregate.
The standalone question worth asking first: This is a standalone — no series, no cliffhanger, and no advance reader flags an unresolved ending. It is also Sterling’s first adult romance after a completed YA trilogy (These Witches Don’t Burn, This Coven Won’t Break, The Coldest Touch), so a reader who loves this and wants more of her has a finished backlist to go to immediately, not a wait for a sequel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has With All My Haunted Heart been released yet?
Not yet. Berkley publishes it on September 8, 2026. Everything in this review reflects advance/ARC reader response ahead of that date, which we’ve flagged throughout.
Does With All My Haunted Heart end on a cliffhanger?
No. It’s a standalone, and no advance reader flags an unresolved ending or a cliffhanger.
How spicy is With All My Haunted Heart?
About a 3/5. Advance readers describe two to three open-door or fade-to-black scenes that stay creative rather than explicit. romance.io has no entry yet since the book hasn’t published.
Is With All My Haunted Heart part of a series?
No. It’s a standalone and Isabel Sterling’s first adult romance, following a completed YA trilogy.
Is there an audiobook?
Yes — narrated by Jeremy Carlisle Parker for Penguin Random House Audio, running 12 hours 5 minutes unabridged, releasing the same day as the book, September 8, 2026.
What content warnings does With All My Haunted Heart carry?
StoryGraph’s crowd-sourced warnings list child death, terminal illness and grief as graphic; sexual content, death and drug use as moderate; and cancer, child abuse and a car accident as minor.
If You Loved With All My Haunted Heart, Read These Next
Readers who want the same open-door heat with a slower-built romance should look at The Honey Witch, a cottagecore witch-and-skeptic slow burn with the same found-family core. For the closest premise match — a witch, a ghost, and small-town stakes — Pumpkin Spice & Poltergeist runs the same cozy paranormal engine at a hotter 4/5. And for the same low-conflict, workplace-adjacent cozy register, The Last Caspian matches the heat band exactly with a found-family workplace romance instead of a haunting.
For more, browse our Paranormal & Fantasy Lesbian Romance hub or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
With All My Haunted Heart is a cozy paranormal romance with real ambition underneath the cozy label: a magic system built on craft rather than power, a grief storyline that advance readers consistently call the book’s best material, and a found-family arc that resists a tidy fix for the family that caused the damage. It is also, for a real minority of advance readers, a romance whose chemistry takes too long to convince — and a cast whose overlapping nicknames occasionally cost clarity. Whether that trade matters depends on how much you need the central couple to spark immediately, but the reader who doesn’t gets a well-built, emotionally serious cozy romance with a clean, complete ending. Check With All My Haunted Heart on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, With All My Haunted Heart ranks as a strong-concept cozy paranormal sapphic romance — emotionally serious under a light surface, held back for some readers by a slow-igniting central romance, and best approached for the magic system and the grief handling rather than instant chemistry.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 4.0/5
- ✓ 4.15 average across 137 Goodreads advance-reader ratings
- ✓ Magic system and grief handling carry it
- ✓ 2% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph
- ✓ Chemistry criticism is real but a genuine minority view
Romance ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Slow burn compressed into roughly one month, not rushed
- ✓ Healthy, communicative relationship dynamic praised repeatedly
- ✓ Several readers call the chemistry “authentic” and “rewarding”
- ✓ A real minority read it as underdeveloped, closer to friendship
Characters ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Pippa’s arc from estranged and self-reliant to open is well-earned
- ✓ Elle’s guardedness resolves into a specific, sourced backstory
- ✓ Single POV keeps the reveal of Elle’s secret working as a reveal
- ✓ Triple-naming convention (Pippa/Perpetua, Elle/Louie, Xander/Alex) confuses at least one reader
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ Magic-as-craft detail praised as considered rather than decorative
- ✓ “Immensely impressed” is one reader’s direct assessment
- ✓ Solid, unremarkable-in-a-good-way prose per the majority of reviewers
- ✓ One reviewer flags em-dash overuse disrupting rhythm
Emotional Impact ★★★★★ 4.5/5
- ✓ Grief and terminal illness handled as the book’s strongest material
- ✓ Author’s note on personal loss singled out by name, repeatedly
- ✓ Found family vs. unrepaired biological family treated honestly
- ✓ A specific chapter (25) flagged as difficult for readers with related loss
Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Two to three open-door or fade-to-black scenes
- ✓ Creative and plot-integrated rather than explicit
- ✓ Not treated as a headline draw by any reviewer found
- ✓ No romance.io entry yet — pre-publication
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ Standalone, no cliffhanger flagged by any advance reader
- ✓ Business, family and romance threads all appear to resolve
- ✓ No reviewer specifically singled out the ending’s execution
- ✓ Lower confidence than other dimensions — under-discussed in reviews
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Cozy atmosphere and seasonal setting invite a return
- ✓ Full unabridged audiobook offers a real second pass
- ✓ Standalone means no sequel pulling readers back
- ✓ At least one reviewer calls the plot “rather predictable”
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