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.

©2025 Ellen O'Clover (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“The Heartbreak Hotel is a lush, romantic, and devastatingly tender story about finding who you are beneath all your broken pieces. It cracked me wide open and filled me to the brim with hope. Ellen O’Clover is absolutely a romance voice to watch.”—B.K. Borison, USA Today bestselling author of Business Casual

"The Heartbreak Hotel is a perfect book. Ellen O'Clover is brilliant, writing tenderness, longing, and tension so viscerally that I felt like I was holding my breath the entire time I was reading. Lou and Henry have broken hearts whose edges match up perfectly, and the way they navigated their losses together was, quite simply, transformative. I'll be thinking about the last three words in this book for the rest of my life."—Jessica Joyce, USA Today bestselling author of The Ex Vows

"The Heartbreak Hotel is such a gorgeous, affirming book -- beautiful on a sentence level and powerful on an emotional level. I fell in love with Henry, good with dogs and closed-off with grief, and Louisa, great at helping other people through heartache even when she's going through her own. Ellen O'Clover has such a talent for well-drawn characters and big feelings, I know I will be anticipating every single book she ever puts out."—Alicia Thompson, USA Today bestselling author of The Art of Catching Feelings

"Reading The Heartbreak Hotel is a lot like I imagine staying at the Comeback Inn would be—warm, soft, and leaves your heart feeling so beautifully cared for. O'Clover's gorgeous prose made me want to abandon all of my responsibilities and read it in one straight shot. Poignant and life-affirming, this is contemporary romance at its absolute finest!"—Sarah Adler, USA Today bestselling author of Finders Keepers

“Ellen O'Clover has crafted an achingly tender and sweet novel about what can happen when we allow ourselves to love and be loved in return. Reading The Heartbreak Hotel felt like accepting a warm, reassuring hug. I can't wait to read whatever Ellen writes next!”—Kristina Forest, USA Today bestselling author of The Love Lyric