You’re the One That I Haunt by Katie Jung — ARC Book Review

Written By Angie

Title: You’re the One That I Haunt

Author: Katie Jung

Pub Date: September 22, 2026

Publisher: Penguin Books

Rating: ★★★★★

Every once in a while, I finish a book and immediately know that writing the review is going to be easy—not because I have nothing to say, but because I have so much to say. You’re the One That I Haunt by Katie Jung is one of those books.

I honestly haven’t been this excited to review a book in months. And somehow, this was also my first official fall read of the year. So if this is how we’re beginning the season, the bar has been set ridiculously high. A Ghost, a Curse, and a Complicated Love Story.

Libby Lakoski has been in love with her best friend, Carter Coldwell, for years. There’s just one fairly significant problem: Carter is engaged to someone else.

At his engagement party, Libby escapes to the library looking for somewhere to hide from everything she’s feeling. Instead, she encounters a man. A handsome man. A charming man. A very, very dead man… or is he?

Trip Coldwell is Carter’s cousin—and a ghost. Even more inconveniently, Libby is the only person who can see him.

Trip has unfinished business involving a generations-old curse affecting the Coldwell family. He needs Libby’s help to break it, but there’s a catch: what Trip needs Libby to do is directly at odds with what Libby thinks she wants. And so begins their strange partnership as they follow clues around New York City, attempting to unravel the curse while Libby starts questioning some things she has believed about love, friendship, and herself for a very long time.

I’m going to stop there because this is one of those books where you should experience the rest for yourself. Because sometimes You Don’t Just Read a Romance. You Feel It.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to about this book. There are romances I enjoy intellectually. I like the characters. I understand why they’re attracted to one another. I root for them to get together.

And then occasionally there is a romance that produces an actual physical reaction. You know that feeling? That little drop in your stomach. That flutter when one character says something—or sometimes doesn’t say something—and suddenly your body has registered the emotional significance of the moment before your brain has fully caught up. You’re the One That I Haunt did that to me. More than once. And that is probably one of the highest compliments I can give a romance novel. I wasn’t simply being told these characters had chemistry. I felt it.

There’s anticipation here. There is tension. There is yearning. And considering one of these people is a ghost and therefore presents some rather obvious logistical difficulties in the romance department, the inability to simply reach out and touch one another creates its own delicious kind of ache and yearning.

The publisher actually describes the book as a slow-burn romance, and I’m inclined to agree with that characterization—particularly because so much of its romantic power comes from anticipation and impossibility rather than simply physical intimacy. Which brings me to Trip.

I seem to have accidentally entered a period of my reading life in which yearning men are simply being delivered directly to my doorstep. And now one of them is dead.

Trip is funny and flirtatious and charming, but what I loved about him wasn’t simply his romantic appeal. It’s the way his relationship with Libby gradually forces her to reconsider how she sees herself and the relationships around her. There is something particularly lovely about a character who doesn’t just want another person but sees them. And that’s the kind of romance that gets me every single time.

 
 

This Book Sparkles

I’ve been trying to come up with a more sophisticated way of explaining this, and I’ve decided I don’t need one. This book sparkles. That’s what it feels like. It’s funny. It’s romantic. It’s whimsical. It’s hopeful. There’s a supernatural mystery running through it, but it never overwhelms the emotional heart of the story.

The actual mechanics of the plot aren’t extraordinarily complicated, and I don’t mean that as criticism. They don’t need to be. The mystery gives the characters somewhere to go and something to pursue while the emotional story develops around it.

And even then, Katie Jung managed to surprise me. There were several turns I didn’t anticipate, which made the experience even more enjoyable because I wasn’t spending the entire book waiting for the story to arrive at a destination I’d already mapped out. But ultimately, the curse wasn’t what kept me reading.

The people were. Underneath the ghost story and the curse and the romance is something much more grounded. Libby begins the story believing she knows what her happily-ever-after looks like. She has history with Carter. She has years of memories and longing and emotional investment tied up in that relationship. And has become so attached to the future she’s imagined that she has not truly asked herself whether it still fits the person she has is now.

I loved watching Libby begin to confront that. Because ultimately this isn’t simply a story about deciding which man you love. It’s also about recognizing your own worth, examining the stories you’ve told yourself about what love is supposed to look like, and being willing to imagine a different happily-ever-after.

That gave what could easily have been just a cute paranormal rom-com considerably more emotional weight.

The Perfect Beginning to My Fall Reading

And perhaps that’s why this one hit me at exactly the right moment. I wanted my first fall book to feel like fall. Not necessarily Halloween. Not horror. Not something relentlessly spooky. I wanted New York City, changing seasons, mystery, romance, warmth, magic, and possibility. This gave me all of it.

It feels like the beginning of autumn to me: cozy without being saccharine, supernatural without becoming dark, romantic without sacrificing the rest of the story. And above everything else, it left me feeling happy.

There are books you finish and think, That was good. There are books you recommend. And then occasionally there’s a book you know while you’re still reading it is going to stay with you. This was one of those books for me.

I loved Libby. I loved Trip. I kind of loved Carter. I loved the mystery, the humor, the ridiculous predicament, the emotional growth, and that wonderful aching impossibility built into falling for someone you can’t even touch. But mostly, I loved how this book made me feel. And really, isn’t that what we’re looking for?

Five stars. No hesitation. And Katie Jung? What a debut.

Perfect for readers who love: paranormal romance, slow-burn tension, yearning, reluctant allies, family curses, supernatural mysteries, New York City settings, emotionally satisfying character growth, and romances where not being able to touch somehow makes everything approximately 700% worse.

Wonderful book link-ups I enjoy—

Angie https://angiebaer.com
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