Brought to you by Penguin.

She thought she was in a romance. Fate threw her into a thriller. Will happily-ever-after still be on the cards when fiction and reality blur for Roxie?

When Roxie makes a tongue-in-cheek wish to live out the plot of her favorite author's next novel, she has romance in mind — namely, the sweet, safe, swoon-worthy storylines Anna Matthews is known for. It should be a dream come true when her wish is granted by a mysterious busker, and she finds herself swept into a fairytale first date with a dashing stranger who seems destined to take her breath away.

Except for one little hiccup: that dashing stranger tries to take her breath away. Literally. With a knife. The thing is, Roxie may be the new Anna Matthews protagonist — but this time, Anna is writing a crime thriller.

Thrown into a perilous genre she's never read, Roxie is desperate for help. So, when her escape from a potential murderer takes her straight into the path of Grant Hoffman — an anxious English professor with a convenient love of crime novels — she decides a little light kidnapping is a small price to pay for survival.

Together, Roxie and Grant team up to navigate a madcap story where the lines between fiction and reality blur and find out if they have what it takes to make it to The End — or maybe even Happily Ever After.

Perfect for fans of The Flat Share, In Five Years, A Novel Love Story and movie hits The Lost City and Hit Man

© Kate Eberle 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026