Girl Next Door by Rachel Meredith

Girl Next Door

A Novel

Rachel Meredith

HarperCollins · Print & ebook · September 9, 2025

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Who it’s for
A playful rom-com blends prickly attraction, secrets, and the uneasy business of telling someone else’s story.
Themes
Romance, Secrets and hidden identities, Truth versus fiction
Genres
Lesbian Romance, Romantic Comedy, Contemporary Romance

About this book

“Girl Next Door is everything I love. Complex characters, a prickly love interest, secrets, yearning, questionable decisions, and that glorious HEA. A tender, funny, sexy novel.” — Ashley Herring Blake, author of Delilah Green Doesn't Care In this charming debut rom-com, a young freelancer returns to her suburban hometown to uncover why her childhood next door neighbor’s bestselling book appears to be an epic love story about the two of them.

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When MC Calloway’s best friend Joe, an editor at the notorious gossip website Jawbreaker, calls her in for an emergency meeting, MC is unprepared for how frantic he is. But when he shows her a copy of Girl Next Door, the steamy, bestselling rom-com taking the literary world by storm, written under a pen name, points to one of the women on the front cover, and says, “that's you,” its MC who begins to panic. Joe is convinced that the author is Nora Pike, MC's prickly, childhood next-door neighbor, and their former high school classmate – and MC knows he’s right, since the book describes actual events that happened their senior year, down to the tiniest details. But in the book, the characters based on MC and Nora are desperately in love, rather than the awkward acquaintances MC remembers being in real life. Joe begs MC to go home undercover and get the scoop on Nora. That’s the last thing MC wants to do, especially for an assignment that seems morally dubious at best, but she reluctantly agrees, knowing Joe is desperate to break a big story. Crashing in her childhood home with her older brother Conrad (now married to MC's secret high school crush, Gabby), MC begins untangling truth from fiction, trying to get close to Nora, who is just as hot and prickly as ever – and now suspicious of MC to boot. But the more involved she gets with Nora, the more it becomes clear they’re both hiding secrets . . . and MC realizes she might be in over her head. Perfect for readers of Delilah Green Doesn't Care and Book Lovers, Girl Next Door is a delicious debut brimming with romance, humor, and heart.

Fiction Meets Feeling

A playful rom-com blends prickly attraction, secrets, and the uneasy business of telling someone else’s story.

Come here for

  • Romance tangled up with a book that knows too much
  • Prickly chemistry and tender humor

Expect

  • Secrets, closeness, and complicated choices
  • A happy ending, with a few questionable decisions

Where it sits

Romantic Comedy86%
Lesbian Romance85%
Contemporary Romance26%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Lesbian Fiction
  • Romance
  • Contemporary Romance
  • Romantic Suspense
Show all 8 publisher categories
  • Romantic Comedy
  • Enemies to Lovers
  • Coming-of-Age
  • Women's Fiction
Authors
Rachel Meredith
Publisher
HarperCollins
Published
September 9, 2025
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Romance · Secrets and hidden identities · Truth versus fiction
Reading lane
Lesbian Fiction