Cursed Castles & Irish Cream

Carrie Hawthorne doesn’t do reckless. She does seven hairpins, a chignon engineered like a bridge, and a family foundation she’s held together since her mother died. She definitely doesn’t do group tours of Irish castles with strangers who call things “cinematic.”

But when her brother’s embezzlement detonates her carefully managed life mid-trip, and a no-nonsense Irish tour guide confiscates every phone on the bus, Carrie finds herself stranded in a dead-zone cottage on the Atlantic coast with Declan O’Rourke — a fitness influencer who does handstands in castle ruins and treats charm like a contact sport.

Three days. No Wi-Fi. No audience. No rules except the ones they make.

But what happens in the dead zone doesn’t stay in the dead zone. And the real battle is waiting back in Rhode Island, where Carrie’s family wants her compliant, the press wants her scandal, and Declan has to prove that the man who showed up without a phone is the same man who’ll show up in a suit.

Cursed Castles & Irish Cream is a wickedly funny, deeply romantic novel about two people who built their lives on performance — and the three days that burned it all down.