Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Kiss, Marry, Kill by Lori Gold, which releases on April 7th 2026.

When three best friends and founders of a health and wellness app on the verge of hitting the big time play a spin on the game of “kiss, marry, kill” at their company’s summer outing, they wake up the next morning in an alternate universe to discover they’ve each done just that.

Kiss: In the “real world,” quiet, indecisive Aubrey is heartbroken over things ending with her fiancé. In the new reality ushered in by the game, Aubrey finds herself in bed, naked, next to their company’s newly hired graphic designer.

Marry: Practical, straight-laced Ilena, on the brink of a divorce following a stressful struggle with infertility, wakes up six months pregnant and married to their company’s general counsel.

Kill: Mallory’s philosophy is to ask neither forgiveness nor permission. Yet the reckless behavior of their biggest investor crosses lines even Mallory didn’t know she had. Especially since she’s been secretly sleeping with him for the past year. She’s mad enough to kill. But in this world, he’s already dead.

This is the start of Chapter 7. Prior to this, best friends and co-founders of a health and wellness app, called AIM, played a spin on the game of kiss, marry, kill at their summer outing. Each woman made a single choice, using those present at their summer outing as the pool they could select from. Aubrey chose “kiss,” Ilena, “marry,” and Mallory, “kill.” Now, they’ve woken up in an alternate universe that mirrors their own having lived out their choices. Here, they are confronting the person Mallory “chose to kill,” their chief investor and CEO of their board of directors, Grayson Fields.

CHAPTER 7

AUBREY

Friday Morning
One Day After the Outing

Aubrey sits on Grayson Fields’s bed with his orphaned dog in her lap while her best friends debate what to do with the body. The body, like it’s a thing, an old armchair with peeling leather and a saggy cushion kept around because you can’t remember how it got through the door in the first place. He’s a person, Aubrey wants to scream, but doesn’t. She doesn’t have anything to follow it with. No solution to offer.

She’s seen enough movies and TV shows to know that there’s still a window of time where they can make this right, not get in any deeper, call the police and justify Mallory not doing so sooner because she was in shock. Shock can do all sorts of things to a person. Something she learned with Ethan. She pictures him, his sandy hair falling into his light green eyes, and drops of sweat erupt along her hairline. Her vision narrows as if traveling through a darkening tunnel, and she roots herself deeper into the mattress to stay upright.

She senses another sneeze coming on and tries to stifle it, as if by being quiet she can offset the fact that she’s in here with a hypoallergenic dog she’s somehow allergic to while her best friends deal with a dead body.

“Ilena, your legs.” Mallory’s order filters through the crack of the bedroom door. “Lift with your legs.”

“Legs? My legs?” Ilena says. “Oh, of course, wait, there they are. It’s hard to see them past my honeydew melon of a stomach.”

Lifting? Ilena’s lifting Gray—the body? Isn’t that bad? Aren’t pregnant women not supposed to lift heavy things? Or is it carry? Or is it—

The sneeze refuses to be stopped and the dog leaps from her lap, a blur of orange disappearing through the door before Aubrey can unfold herself. “Harley, no!” she shouts.

Keeping the dog calm and contained, that’s all Aubrey was tasked with doing. Both of her friends had taken one look at the queasiness all over her face and sent her away. Aubrey was relegated once again to the place she’s lived in her whole life as the youngest, quietest member of a family of Teflon-strength personalities. By the time she’d come along, birthday cakes were always chocolate even though the caffeine gave her headaches, pets were always of the feather variety even though their jerky necks gave her nightmares, and afterschool activities involved balls of any size, not wires or motherboards. She believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy for far too long because she wanted to believe the impossible could be possible. Like her grandmother did. If it weren’t for her grandmother convincing Aubrey’s parents that Williams College was a place that wouldn’t swallow Aubrey whole, she might not have gone. She might not have majored in computer science and wound up at the Silicon Valley start-up program, filling in for a co-worker who dropped out. She might never have met Mallory and Ilena. Or wound up here.

“Harley!” Ilena cries. “Careful, Mallory!”

Aubrey untucks her legs and swings them to the floor. She presses her hands into the mattress, a reflexive pro-con list forming in her mind, and of all the pro-con lists that have formed in her mind or will ever form in her mind, this has to be the most surreal.

She clears her throat and tries to choke out a “Do you need help?” but of course they need help. But they won’t ask. Because she’s too fragile.

“Your left foot, Mallory, watch your left . . . your other left!” Ilena says.

“Christ, this dog, where’s Aubrey? Aubrey!” Mallory shrieks.

And Aubrey forces herself off the bed and into the hall.

Ilena faces her full on. “Aubrey, we’re fine. Grab the dog and go back into the bedroom. We’ve got this.”

A striped blanket in the shape of a body lies on the floor between Mallory and Ilena. Aubrey takes in the block of a torso in the middle, the limbs spreading to either side, the thrust of a nose making the blanket protrude, and her face must relay every ounce of her fear and grief and uncertainty, but she says, “I can help. I—I want to help.”

Ilena sets her jaw, a refusal coming, but then begins one of those silent conversations with Mallory, their friendship of more than twenty years intimidating and inspiring, and still it’s entirely dumbfounding how Aubrey’s been a part of it for the past eight. Ilena steps back and says, “Okay, then.”

“Spectacular.” Mallory tugs down the hem of a white shirt that must be Grayson’s. She slipped it over her jumpsuit, for warmth, maybe, or maybe to cover those marks on her arm.

A week out from taking their company public on Wall Street and potentially filling their bank accounts with more money than Aubrey could spend in three lifetimes, they are placing a dead man in a freezer custom-built to look like a blanket chest. It’s gorgeous, a deep red mahogany with chiseled wood inlays and a compressor that’s nearly silent. You’d never know it was storing not extra sheets and pillows and duvets but organic, raw dog food and grass-fed beef and cauliflower pizza crusts. You’d never guess it was about to be home to one of the most successful venture capitalists in the country.

To make room for Aubrey, Mallory shoves the garbage bag full of frozen food aside with her foot. “Just for now. Until we figure out what’s happening. Then we’ll make it right.”

They’ll want to, maybe they’ll even try, but they won’t be able to. Some wrongs are only wrong after the fact, when consequences and perspective give you hindsight you’d have other-wise never had. Like Ethan. Other wrongs can be seen from a mile away. This is one of those.

The three of them heave Grayson Fields into the freezer with a fair amount of difficulty given Ilena’s current situation and the fact that Aubrey’s hands can’t stop shaking. Without the need to say it, Mallory is the one who makes the final adjustments and closes the lid.

Mallory turns to face them. “Okay, we need some rules. It goes without saying, we tell no one.” Her eyes dart to Ilena, who reluctantly nods. “We stay vigilant, ears open, eyes wide, taking in everything but offering little. We need to let others lead and direct the conversation. Just like Aubrey already does.”

This isn’t meant as a criticism despite it feeling that way. “We maintain our normal routines, whatever those are here,”

Mallory continues, ticking things off as if she’s done this before. “Check calendars and emails and cancel things that seem dangerous.”

Aubrey stiffens. “Dangerous? What’s dangerous?”

Mallory shrugs. “I don’t know, like a high school reunion? Where people will know too many things we don’t.”

Isn’t that basically everything here? Everyone?

Mallory pushes on. “We don’t draw attention, we don’t post on social media, we don’t deplete our other selves’ bank accounts. What’s that thing Jonah made us do when he forced us to go camping?”

Ilena hugs her arms. “Leave no trace?”

Mallory nods. “That’s it. That’s what we do. As best we can.” She pauses. “But AIM’s still going public in this reality, and we owe it to all versions of ourselves to support that. We can’t be absent from work.”

Ilena’s jaw tightens.

Mallory ignores her and fixes her gaze on Aubrey. “We’re here, together, in one piece. One step at a time. Okay?”

Aubrey. The weak link. Always.

She starts to nod, then says, suddenly, “Someone’s got to take the dog. I think I might be allergic, and Ilena—” She gestures to Ilena’s belly. “So, Mallory. Mallory’s got to take the dog.”

It’s the first decision Aubrey’s made without hesitating in a long time.

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Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Lori Gold’s Romantic Friction, which is out May 6th 2025.

Sofie Wilde’s bestselling fantasy romance series has been breaking bestseller records and readers’ hearts for years. She’s primed to become a worldwide phenomenon as the tenth and final book is set to debut after the annual romance readers convention takes place in Chicago next week. As buzz continues to build toward the book’s release, Sofie is asked to headline the event for the first time, a career milestone. One she won’t let anyone take from her, especially “the next Sofie Wilde.”

That’s what they’re calling her—Hartley West, the self-published debut author who writes in the style of Sofie Wilde. Except she doesn’t actually “write” anything. After Hartley admits to using AI to create her novel, Sofie’s ready to watch Hartley be skewered on social media. Except in this unpredictable world, Hartley is instead lauded for being innovative, for being such a skilled editor to take what the AI churned out and massage it into a story that’s just as compelling as Sofie’s—maybe even more so.

After her unhinged rant unintentionally goes viral, Sofie loses her keynote, and she’s starting to lose all her support. That loss is Hartley’s gain—as her book sales start soaring, she’s given the headliner spot. Sofie is livid. And she’s not the only one. As the convention begins, Sofie is surrounded by fellow authors who also fear for their futures, their livelihoods, their art being stripped away, one AI prompt at a time. Something must be done. This has to be stopped. Now. With the clock ticking down to the keynote, Sofie enlists her fellow authors in a plan to stop Hartley, vowing, “‘The next Sofie Wilde’—over my dead body. Or hers.”

Chapter 1
About the Author

It’s a commonly held belief that in order to be a good author you have to be drunk or tortured. To be a great author? Both. I am a great author. I am occasionally drunk (though not at present). But I am not prone to sprawled-on-the-bathroom- floor bawling. I have not, nor will I ever, utter the phrase: “Please don’t make me adult today.” And I am not the least bit disturbed by crawling into a king-size bed alone.

All that’s to say, I am not, nor have I ever been, tortured. But there truly is a first time for everything.

The bookstore buzzes like an active hive. Beyond these rolling partitions masquerading as shelves, cushioned folding chairs cradle bums of all shapes and sizes and stages of cellulite. They are here for me. As I am here for them. This is my home- town. And this is the bookstore in my hometown that Jocelyn and Torrence and Callum and little Vance built, word by word, page by page, chapter by chapter, book by book. That I share with no one.

I am not a charity.

My coattails are not for riding.

Tell that to Lacey, my publicist for the last ten years. I already did. Multiple times and with only one expletive. (Which honestly is the definition of restraint.) And yet, I am here. Because Blaire, my agent with a heart mushier than a ripe peach, intervened on Lacey’s behalf and asked me to be.

Listen, that this industry is harder to navigate than Gen Z slang is not lost on me. I’m not completely averse to the idea of paying it forward, even though when I was starting out no one gave me so much as a linty nickel. But you can be damn sure that if a bestselling author who helped to define my genre had invited me (via said publicist) to a bookstore’s celebration of their blockbuster series, I’d have been on time.

Not late. By twenty minutes—and counting.

I reach for the partition cordoning off this back room, my rose gold bangles clattering as I wiggle free a chapter book—a tale about monsters hiding in school cubbies that must be the bane of every kindergarten teacher’s existence. A ghost of a smile plays on my lips, affection for my kindred spirit of an author who came up with this. I set the book aside and peek through the slim gap.

Heart-shaped helium balloons kiss the ceiling, “library” candles that smell of old books and lavender flicker on the windowsills, and my favorite cushioned armchair beckons from behind my usual signing table, an old desk with legs fashioned out of stacked books. Hanging above the register is a poster of the first nine titles in this series I nearly gave a kidney to make happen (don’t ask).

The dozens who have traveled from as close as Boston and as far as Iowa wait with more patience than me alongside half the residents of this small seaside town.

With so many bodies, the room temperature rises. The air turns electric. And I come alive. I wriggle my head out of my introverted shell and gorge myself on the energy of the crowd. I’m no longer a little girl with debilitating stage fright, convincing my teachers I’d been bitten by a squirrel or had a seven-foot-long tapeworm in my belly to get out of an oral report. Turns out I’ve always been good at lying.

Lies, fibs, fabrications, tall tales. That’s all writing is, really, being good at making things up, convincing others that a little boy with freckled cheeks and a mop of carrot-colored hair can bend universes in one breath and giggle at fart jokes in the next. Ah, little Vance—everyone’s favorite character. Which is why he had to die. My socials will be flooded with heartbreak emoji and death threats when fans get their hands on this last book.

My god, do I love my job.

“Sofie, our little Sofie.”

I would take these words as a slight, given my five-foot-stature, if they weren’t coming from a woman slipping behind the partition with arms outstretched, a half dozen tiny pencils poking out of her salt-and-pepper bun, and a “Roxanne (as in Bel Canto!)” name tag on her ample left breast (the right is ample too, but there’s just the one name tag).

“Tell me,” Roxanne says, wiggling her phone and pressing the side button to shut it down. “And not even Instagram will hear. Will Vance be able to restore the cosmic balance in time for Jocelyn to choose Torrence? Because she will, naturally. It must be Torrence.”

My face remains hard as steel.

“Sofie,” Roxanne coaxes. “It’s me. We did this together. We built this store as a team. This is ours.”

Roxanne also has a penchant for hyperbole.

Still, these days, my fantasy romance series—what this Gen Z, grammar-phobic world now calls “romantasy”—is a New York Times bestseller, and I have more than half a million followers on social media. But fifteen years ago, I was a thirty-five-year-old woman with mousy brown hair, clear plastic-framed eyeglasses, and self-made bookmarks rolled off my laser printer in need of a yellow cartridge. A self-published author without the financial means to promote myself. That’s when I met Roxanne.

When I walked through the door of Harbor Books with my sack of sad-looking bookmarks and shoddily glued-together manuscripts, Roxanne didn’t even wait for me to finish my plea to support a local author. She was already slapping price stickers on the back and arranging them in a three-foot-tall window display.

Roxanne bats her eyelashes. “I can better serve you and the book if I know how to respond to customer inquiries.”

She gives me that syrupy smile we both know is exaggerated. “Truly, there were no advance reader copies printed? Not even for Jenna? Reese?”

“Not a one,” I say, firmly, though of course there were. Stripped of the cover with confidential and sharing prohibited upon penalty of death written across the front (though, as I think about it, no one ever confirmed the use of that perfectly reasonable suggestion).

A ding announces the opening of the front door. Roxanne peers around the partition to confirm it’s her.

“Break a spine!” Roxanne says, whooshing out.

Instead of following, I pause to peer through that tiny gap on the bookshelf.

My “invited” guest, the author who will ask me a few questions and then moderate ones from the crowd, hovers at the front of the store, seemingly unsure, eyes scanning the room. Silver hair past her shoulders, flowy cotton skirt, well-worn canvas tote bulging with what can only be useless buttons and cheap pens and glitter tattoos she paid for herself. She has no marketing budget for swag or anything else. She’s only here because of me.

No one had heard of Hartley West until a month ago. As happens (usually thanks to a hefty Venmo transfer), an influencer “discovered” Hartley’s self-published debut, Love and Lawlessness. That influencer gushed about it and set off a trend among her fellow movers and shakers—leaders of the “next wave” of how books are found, the whole cadre featured in an article in The New York Times. Like a snowball, more and more readers “found” and recommended Hartley’s book. Said it reminded them of me.

The next Sofie Wilde. That’s what they’re calling her. Over my dead body.

Used with permission by MIRA/HarperCollins

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