REVIEW: While You Were Seething by Charlotte Stein

In While You Were Seething by Charlotte Stein, Daisy Emmett has spent years loathing famous romance author Caleb Miller, and the feeling has always been mutual. So when she agrees to help him navigate a PR disaster, she expects the experience to be unpleasant. What she does not expect is to end up trapped in the same truck with him for a never-ending road trip from one book event to the next. When fans begin assuming Daisy is the mysterious woman Caleb dedicates all of his books to—a woman who does not actually exist—they are forced to keep up the charade. But with every fake kiss and staged embrace, the line between pretending and something very real becomes harder to ignore.

WHILE YOU WERE SEETHING delivered everything I love in an enemies-to-lovers romance—razor-sharp banter, simmering tension, and two people who were clearly fighting feelings that had been there far longer than either of them wanted to admit.

Daisy Emmett and Caleb Miller had been enemies since college, and the tension between them was palpable from the very first page. Beneath the arrogant author persona Caleb was someone far more vulnerable and romantic than he first appeared. The chemistry between him and Daisy was electric, but it was the quieter moments—the honesty that slipped through their defenses, the trust that built beneath all the teasing, and the realization that they had been seeing each other wrong for years—that made this romance work so well for me. By the end, they felt less like two people caught up in a fake relationship and more like two people who had finally stopped fighting what had been there all along.

Tropes
💘 Enemies to lovers
💞 Fake dating
🚚 Forced proximity
🛣️ Road trip romance
📚 Author hero
💋 “We’re only pretending”
🔥 Hidden attraction

Between the fake dating setup, the cross-country road trip, and the constant forced proximity, WHILE YOU WERE SEETHING was a sexy and heartwarming romance about discovering that sometimes the person who irritates you most is the one who understands you best. Perfect for readers who love enemies to lovers, fake dating, road trip romances, and chemistry so intense it practically crackles off the page.

Book Info:

Publication: Published: May 19, 2026 | St. Martin’s Griffin

Daisy Emmett has been enemies with famous romance author Caleb Miller since they were in college together, and time hasn’t lessened their mutual loathing. So when she agrees to manoeuvre him through a PR disaster of his own making, she knows it’s not going to be easy. She just doesn’t realise how not easy until they somehow end up trapped in the same truck, on an endless road trip from one book tour stop to another, bantering and butting heads along the way.

Then, even more horrifying: people appear to be mistaking her for the woman he dedicates all his books to. The love of his life, his adored beloved―the one who doesn’t actually exist. Now they’re trapped into pretending she does and that Daisy is her, each fake kiss and phoney embrace ratcheting up the tension to the point where enemies suddenly seems a lot closer to lovers than either of them would like.

Or so they’re telling themselves.

But sometimes it’s hard to be sure, when seething turns into something so much more…