Spotlight & Giveaway: Entities to Lovers by Mallory Marlowe

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Mallory Marlowe’s new release: Entities to Lovers

A connection that’s more than supernatural emerges between two rival tour guides who wish they could ghost each other in this sparkling romantic comedy from USA Today bestselling author Mallory Marlowe.

 
Paranormal medium Rory Woods spends her days offering psychic readings at Ye Olde Spirit Shop and nights haunting the streets of Boston as a ghost-tour guide. Sure, business could be better, but she’s proud of the shop she runs with her mom.

Enter Ezra Blackwell: adjunct history professor, noted thorn in Rory’s side, and—though she’d only admit it under threat of medieval torture he surely knows too much about—a distractingly handsome, charismatic coworker.

Rory can’t stand Ezra’s know-it-all, show-offy behavior. Ezra loves to tease the gorgeous, brilliant medium at the shop. And when the two are forced to host a tour together? It’s no wonder they end up hexed after disturbing a matchmaking ghost.

Saddled with perpetual bad luck unless they’re physically near each other, Rory and Ezra will try anything, from séances to kissing, to stop the jinx from wreaking havoc on both their lives. But in their quest to appease the spirit, they realize that growing closer might not be the curse they once thought it was.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Entities to Lovers 

I pop open my locker. I’m halfway through applying a new coat of Midnight Plum lip stain when the beaded curtain rustles again and I’m hit with the smell of razor-sharp citrus and leather. I don’t have time to groan before Ezra Blackwell-the store’s most popular and my least favorite tour guide-saunters in. He buttons his black satin waistcoat with his embroidered violet and charcoal jacket slung over his shoulder. He takes his place in front of the full-length mirror behind me.

“Evening, Ms. O’Brien,” he says. His accent stops short of mid-Atlantic, but is deep and proper posh nevertheless. He’s astonishingly good with dialects and has tried out a few in his time at the Spirit Tours. This is the one he stuck with. “Looking particularly dead this evening.”

Our eyes meet in the mirror. He smirks.

Simply put, Ezra Blackwell looks like he would not survive the Industrial Revolution. He’s below average height-though everything feels tall to my five feet-with a lean body of sharp angles. On his head, there’s a shock of dark hair that curls at the ends. Everything about him is an unpredictable danger, from the occasionally painted nails to the silver hoop earring hugging his cartilage, and the myriad of black tattoos peeking from his rolled-up sleeves.

It’s particularly dangerous because I am alarmingly into all of that.

Ezra joined the Spirit Tours last Halloween, when we bring on seasonal hires to accommodate the flourish of business during spooky season. Usually they’re students searching for a fun temporary gig, or local actors with a free window in their schedule, and then they depart. Ezra, however, immediately became our most beloved tour guide and stuck around.

What I’ll give him is that he’s the most qualified of any of us. I can’t rag on Ezra’s master’s degree or his job as an adjunct history professor at Revere University, but I sure can grumble at his arrogant attitude and insistence on proving he’s the smartest man in the room. He’s rustled every feather, disrupted every resting place, and dethroned me in reviews. When Ezra is at Ye Olde Spirit Shop, it’s no longer a haven.

“Oh, being dead is quite delightful, Mr. Montgomery.” I regard his own ghostly character and slip into my accent as well. “You should try it sometime.”

Ezra runs his tongue against the back of his teeth and leaves the top of his dark button-down undone. Ezra did put considerable effort into his costume. Immediately after my mom complimented his getup, he went on some tangent about the special brocades and the history of the Jacquard loom.

I remember this not because I find his intelligence alluring, of course, but because it was annoying.

He stares back, unblinking like it’s a contest. It always is with him. Ezra has the searing, uncanny look of a Victorian portrait, one with deep, dark eyes that follow you around the room, long eyelashes, and heavy, expressive brows. The otherworldly, old-timey haunted essence he has makes the waistcoat and jacket feel natural. He even owns a pocket watch.

I blink and lose the contest. Fuck.

Ezra chuckles and pulls the coffin-shaped button through the top hole on his shirt. “Afraid I have a tour aboard the Grisly Fate this evening, so I’ve no time to perish.”

I freeze and spin. Ezra’s moved on to applying a smudged layer of eyeliner to his lower lids. Then he rubs the tip of his index finger along his waterline.

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes? I do?”

“No, because I have the nine p.m. on Grisly Fate.”

We stare at each other in silence, like cats waiting for the perfect moment to pounce, but I do not trust Ezra Blackwell not to bite.

Finally, his posture shifts, and before he beats me to it, I fling myself through the beaded curtains into the store.

“Mom!” I shout.

My mother pokes her head out of the storage room. Her cat-eye glasses sit atop her wispy blond hair and she’s lugging a hefty box in her arms, which immediately makes my heart sink. She turned fifty a few months ago and figured it was time to try a new hobby. Pickleball and her meniscus did not get along. My mother may be a beloved figure in Boston’s paranormal scene, but she is the most hated patient at her physical therapist’s office. It’s been months of trying to keep her from overdoing it as much as possible, but she’s a Taurus, after all.

I know my mother’s been trying to pass more off to me for years, whether it be coming up with new programming ideas or expanding my own business. But this shop is her baby. I couldn’t bear running it into the ground on her.

I trust cards, spirits, and stars more than I ever trust myself.

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Excerpted from Entities to Lovers by Mallory Marlowe Copyright © 2026 by Mallory Marlowe. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Giveaway: 1 finished copy of tENTITIES TO LOVERS (U.S. only, 18+)

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Meet the Author:

Mallory Marlowe is an author and video game writer living in Los Angeles, California. Seriously right-brained since childhood, her love of telling stories began with highly elaborate plots for her Barbie dolls and taking elementary school writing projects too seriously. She studied Writing for Film and TV at Emerson College. When she isn’t writing, she’s likely reading, stuck in LA traffic, or has fallen down a weird internet rabbit hole.

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