What is the title of your latest release?
THE HEARTBREAK HOTEL
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
THE HEARTBREAK HOTEL is a love story between Louisa, a therapist opening a bed-and-breakfast for the brokenhearted in the Colorado mountains, and Henry, her landlord, who hates that she’s doing this in his house because he has a hidden heartbreak of his own.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
THE HEARTBREAK HOTEL takes place in Estes Park, Colorado—a beautiful mountain town best known as the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. This book’s setting (both the town and the house) is a character in and of itself, because it’s really Louisa’s happy place: the first place she’s ever felt like she truly belongs. Since it holds so much weight thematically, I wanted to make sure the setting had some magic to it—and I don’t think there’s anything more magical than the Colorado mountains in the fall.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Absolutely! Lou’s a great friend, a girls’ girl, and courageously open-hearted.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Henry is wounded, but also deeply compassionate and—importantly for Lou—dependable.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Louisa’s a therapist, so I worked with a licensed therapist to learn about the licensing process for counselors and the ins-and-outs of that career.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I do line-level edits as I go but wait until the manuscript is complete to really dig in on revisions. I keep a running list of bigger-picture changes as I draft so I don’t forget to come back to them.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Not sure this qualifies as “foodie,” but you’ll never see me turn down a Nerds Cluster.
Describe your writing space/office!
My office is absolutely my happy place. It’s full of books, art that inspires me (including a giant felt pennant that reads: You’ll think of something), and two often-snoring bulldogs.
Who is an author you admire?
Far too many to list them all here! But to name a few in the romance space specifically: B.K. Borison, Rachel Lynn Solomon, Rachel Runya Katz, Anita Kelly.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Books change my life in big and small ways all the time! A couple that jump to mind are Alice Winn’s In Memoriam and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I heard from my agent on a Wednesday evening that my soon-to-be editor at Berkley wanted to set up a phone call about The Heartbreak Hotel. She said she’d cried at the office when she finished reading it! Nothing was for certain yet, but my husband convinced me to go out for pizza to celebrate anyways (in publishing, you really should celebrate every little win), and we kept whispering “it made her cry” back and forth to each other over the table. I was so nervous and excited I could barely eat.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love any book that gets me into my feelings—whether that’s romance, literary fiction, young adult. But almost all my favorite books have a strong romance plot, regardless of genre.
What’s your favorite movie?
The Mummy (1999)
What is your favorite season?
Autumn
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
By taking the day off work and getting outside, usually for a hike in the mountains near where I live. And capping it off by sharing a meal with people I love.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I had the chance to read Heather McBreen’s Sunk in Love early (it releases in January 2026) and can’t recommend it highly enough! An achy, yearning second-chance romance that hit all the right notes for me.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I’m never not in the mood for sushi.
What do you do when you have free time?
Pick away at my ever-growing TBR pile, take a yoga class, lay on the floor with my dogs.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m working on my second contemporary romance! It’ll be out in late 2026 and features my favorite trope: rivals to lovers.
THE HEARTBREAK HOTEL by Ellen O’Clover
A bed-and-breakfast for the brokenhearted might hold the key to another chance at love in this achingly hopeful debut romance.
Louisa Walsh emerged from a tumultuous childhood with a degree in counseling, a wealthy boyfriend, and her sunny outlook on life mostly intact. But that optimism is tested when she’s dumped and left unable to afford rent on their gorgeous house in the mountains of Colorado. Even with her life in disarray, Lou knows losing the one stable place she’s ever called home is not an option.
Her plan: ask her reclusive landlord, Henry Rhodes, to let her stay for free in exchange for renting out the house’s many rooms as a bed-and-breakfast. She’s shocked when he agrees to her terms, and even more surprised to discover Henry is a handsome thirtysomething veterinarian with silver at his temples and sadness in his eyes. One who does not take it well when Lou starts marketing her B and B as a retreat for the recently heartbroken.
But as the Comeback Inn opens its doors to its weary, hopeful guests, Lou and Henry find themselves dancing around both their undeniable connection and the closely held secrets that threaten to topple this fragile new start. A chance at love, here, could be too close to home…or it could be exactly where their hearts finally heal.
Women’s Fiction Contemporary | Romance Contemporary [Berkley, On Sale: September 23, 2025, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593952542 / eISBN: 9780593952559]
Buy THE HEARTBREAK HOTEL: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Ellen O’Clover
Ellen O’Clover writes stories about love, identity, and belonging for both teens and adults. She grew up in Ohio and studied creative writing at the Johns Hopkins University before moving west to Colorado, where she lives in a little green house under a giant aspen tree with her rocket scientist husband and two perfect bulldogs.
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