Generally speaking, I do not cry while reading. Oh, I’ll want to cry. I’m the opposite of stoic, but I’ve become skilled at holding back tears for one reason and one reason only: glasses. Once I start weeping, my frames turn foggy and any attempt to wipe them with my shirt generally makes it worse.

Then, I’ll have to make a decision:

1. do I continue reading without glasses and squint at my tablet, or
2. do I fetch cleaning solution from another room and waste precious reading time?

Lazy as I am — and unwilling to stop reading — I always go with #1. This is all to say: I try really, really, really hard not to cry while reading. And if such a thing were to occur… well, it would be a very special book.

Open House is a very special book. I didn’t think it would be: the cover is bright and pink, and I didn’t anticipate an extensive exploration of grief that would wreck my heartstrings (“tug” is too tame a word). Don’t get me wrong: Open House is a charming and longish novella with a delightful enemies-to-lovers-but-not-really-it’s-complicated romance (more on this later). But for every laugh-out-loud quip or swoonworthy kiss, there is an omnipresent thread of… melancholy? Pensiveness? Whatever it is, it made my heart hurt in the best of ways. I was getting nervous that a resolution wouldn’t be possible, but the happily-ever-after was victorious and well-deserved. So yes, I did cry a little, but they were cathartic and joyous tears: everything had turned out for the better, and I was so relieved that I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Laden with student debt and self-doubt, newly licensed real estate agent Magda Ferrer is determined to sell her curmudgeon uncle’s Harlem townhouse. She needs this sale to make rent payments, and now she’s tasked with another project: sell an “empty” lot located in the same neighborhood as the townhouse. Only the lot isn’t so much as “empty” as it is “illegal community garden frequented by meddling old ladies and a sexy Taiwanese-American gardener.” Magda isn’t the president of Evil Garden-Hating Corporation, but money trumps morals. She has to do her job and find a buyer for the “empty” lot. Even if infuriating (but very sweet) Tyson Yang is determined to block her efforts wherever she goes. But… is that really such a bad thing? Spoiler Alert: no, it is not a bad thing.

Magda and Ty’s relationship is enemies-to-lovers-but-not-really-it’s-complicated. There’s no genuine hatred of the other person. They just happen to fall on two sides of a business conflict, and Magda not-so-secretly expresses her love of the garden. Of course she doesn’t want the garden to be replaced by new construction, but her personal feelings can’t supersede her job. Enemies-to-lovers is tricky to pull off in novellas — am I really supposed to believe that the MCs radically change emotions in such a short timespan? The brilliance of this trope’s execution is the lack of loathing; if Magda and Ty despised each other, I wouldn’t buy the HEA after 150 pages. Yes, they have to find a solution to save the garden, but that’s easily resolved in a novella.

The lack of loathing doesn’t mean that stakes aren’t high. For Magda, selling the lot isn’t some mindless task; it’s her opportunity to prove that she’s capable of accomplishing something. She’s been worn down by a string of failures: not completing her graduate degree in Psychology, not completing culinary school after being denied financial aid,  which are both made more stressful by a mountain of student debt. Trapped by desperate financial straits and a skeptical Puerto Rican family who views her as unreliable, Magda needs to do something, damn it. Something to make her feel like she has value. Even if that something is replacing a thriving community garden with new housing.

For Ty, the community garden is his anchor to life. His mother passed away from cancer a few years ago and his father returned to Taiwan after her death. As a founding member, he’s devoted his entire soul, blood, sweat, and tears to the garden. While he’s careful to not get too close to the other gardeners, they’re still the only family he has besides his sister. Now that his anchor is being threatened, he’s prepared to devote everything to protect it. The stakes can’t possibly get higher, and the protagonists don’t even have to hate each other. That’s the brilliance of this execution of the enemies-to-lovers trope.

The trope’s other brilliant component is how the two sides aren’t easily identified as Good vs. Evil. The reader’s first instinct is to view the conflict as “Tyson Saving the Garden Is 100% Good and Magda Selling the Garden Is 100% Bad.” I never wanted Magda to succeed in selling the garden to a developer, but it turns out that my opinions weren’t so binary after all. As Magda acerbically points out, the “empty” lot does belong to someone and that owner has every right to sell it (and isn’t being compensated by the literal fruits of the garden!). Plus, it’s not like Ty’s own actions have always been beneficial to the neighborhood.

“Are you telling me you’re not one of those people? That you’re not someone who arrived here and drove up the prices so that these glass-and-steel buildings fill this neighborhood? Oh, look at how nice you are, helping out old ladies and trying to keep your pretty garden and participating in the community. You’re even getting muddy with them to show your commitment. And then you wash the mud off and go to your corporate job and buy the very fancy appliances for your place. Now that you’re here, you want to keep things the way they are, all that delightful character. But you didn’t think of what you were doing before moving into the neighborhood, did you? What if I told you that there are a lot of developers interested in mixed-income and affordable housing in this area? What if some of them were interested? Would you step aside for the good of the neighborhood, for the good of your neighbors, your friends, who want to be able to stay here?”

“You aren’t going to sell to those developers, though. You’re going to sell to whoever makes you the most money.” He added uncertainly, “Aren’t you?”

“So what if I am? Listen, you can talk a good game about caring about the community, but people like you moving in was what caused an affordable housing shortage to begin with—not people like me, trying to make a living, trying to sell one empty lot.”

OUCH. I would feel sorry for Ty, but he needed a strong dose of reality. This is only the tip of the iceberg re: gentrification/urban housing discussions. The nuance and breadth of these conversations impressed the hell out of me. It’s only a novella, but somehow Open House managed to incorporate NYC housing problems, family conflict, grief, career-related/financial insecurity, and so much more. It would be a lot for a novel, much less a novella. I’m still not sure how these interwoven threads felt satisfying and fleshed out in 150ish pages, but they were. At no point did I think, “Huh, that conflict felt shallow and I wish it had gotten more attention.” The amount of attention paid to each thread was perfect, and that’s the marker of an exceptional novella.

I don’t want to just paint a picture of melancholy. Yes, it’s there — don’t expect to only giggle and sigh dreamily. But you will giggle and sigh dreamily. The old ladies at the garden are A+ relationship meddlers and protest organizers. Ty’s sister subscribes to my brand of snark and sibling protectiveness. There are encounters of sexy shirtless gardeners during midnight jogs (seriously, Ty, what kind of monster jogs in the middle of the night?). There is a show bed in the townhouse that is teased over and over again, and I was practically screeching at them to jump on it and damn the consequences. There is a very romantic rooftop scene set during a power outage (yes, I know that power outages aren’t particularly sexy in real life, but let me have this fantasy). While there is a thread of melancholy, it’s impossible to ignore the joy and love sprinkled everywhere in Open House.

It’s fairly obvious that I adored this longish novella (I keep on saying longish as I’m not certain about the word count. Retailers say it’s around 150 pages and it’s definitely longer than the average novella). My only nitpick is that the story wraps up fairly quickly after the “save the garden” conflict is resolved, and I wish we had more time to see Ty and Magda as a couple (they don’t start a relationship until the very end). Nitpicks aside, Open House is a shining example of what novellas can accomplish. High word count isn’t necessary for the emotional resonance of numerous complex issues. I enthusiastically recommend Open House to any reader looking to laugh and cry while reading a short contemporary romance.