What's a girl to do when she walks into her new house to find her fiancé banging the real estate agent?  Well, after destroying her wedding dress in a paintball session and finding a new place to live, Dani decides that she should buy the empty lot next to her cheating ex-fiancé and build the house of his nightmares, designed specifically to make him miserable.  To accomplish this, she'll need an architect, and cold, quiet Wyatt Montego who works down the hall from her shocks her when he offers to help out.  Walls go up at the spite house and walls come down between the two of them, until Dani is forced to admit that revenge is sweet but Wyatt is sweeter -- but has she realized this too late?

I think this is a pretty great office romance - Wyatt and Dani are coworkers but at the same level, so there's no weird power dynamics going on here, just all the fun of the sneaking around.  But the conflict felt very... juvenile?  Underbaked?  They were determined to see the worst in each other's actions and it became grating.  

Wyatt, though is grumpy perfection: he's adjusting to life with Menier's disease, including bouts of vertigo and hearing loss.  He's hiding this at the office (which is his right, but the reasoning isn't well explained) which is why he comes across as standoffish.  It's clear that he's been gone on Dani for a while, which is my favorite combo with a grump, "I am a grump but secretly very devoted to you please don't ask me questions."  I love him so much.  The book would have been strengthened with a few chapters from his POV, but I think that really any single POV book could be so take that how you will.

There's a lot that this book is trying to do, and I don't know that it really wraps everything up neatly, which is why it's not a five star read for me.  The spite house spirals, there's a few dangling plot threads, but honestly, I'm pretty obsessed with Wyatt.  I really liked this, and I'm looking forward to more from this author.

Thank you Harlequin and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

infidelity, deceased parent (in the past, briefly remembered on page), arson, blackmail