An After Hours Novel

When the bookshop closes for the night, some feelings become impossible to ignore.

Cora has become very good at keeping the most important parts of herself hidden—particularly the feelings she has never quite managed to lose for Ellis. Working beside him every day means maintaining a careful distance, ignoring everything she wishes could be different and pretending that friendship is enough.

But when a power cut leaves them alone inside the bookshop after closing, the familiar space begins to feel different. With the lights out and the rest of the world kept firmly beyond the locked doors, the silence between them fills with everything Cora has spent years trying not to say.

As the night unfolds, the boundaries she has worked so hard to protect begin to blur—and Cora is forced to wonder whether Ellis might have been hiding something too.

After the Lights Went Out is an emotionally intimate friends-to-lovers romance about grief, quiet longing and finding the courage to reach for something more.