Before You Read Pen Pal: What This Book Actually Delivers

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There are books you open expecting one thing, and then there are books like Pen Pal. The kind that looks you dead in your eyes 👀 and whispers “trust me”, and immediately proceeds to do something totally different.

I walked into the haze that is Pen Pal, prepared for a dark romance. Prison letters. An obsessive stranger. A grieving widow caught up in something dangerous. You know the dark and moody vibes of dark romance.

Except Pen Pal sidestepped that lane so fast it left skid marks on the pages.

✨ TL;DR Here’s What You Should Know…

📮 Not a dark romance — this is paranormal wearing a borrowed genre.
✉️ Dante’s letters hook you early, then he’s MIA for most of the book.
🔥 Aidan = broody, magnetic, the only character with real gravity.
💫 Kayla’s emotional shifts give whiplash instead of depth.
🕳️ Missing flashbacks mean plot threads drift apart instead of clicking together.
⏳ The ending lands strong, but the journey there feels scattered.
📚 Honest marketing + tighter execution could’ve made this a standout paranormal read.
🌫️ Overall: atmospheric, compulsive, confusing — and absolutely not what the blurb promised.

Title: Pen Pal

Author: J.T. Geissinger

Publisher: Bramble

Format: Physical

Genre: Paranormal, Dark Romance, Thriller, Romance

Release Date: August 16, 2022

Pages: 375

Star Rating: 2 stars

Spice Rating: 2 chili peppers

“I’ll wait forever if I have to.” That’s it. There’s nothing else, except a signature scratched below the words. Dante.”

The story begins the day Kayla buries her husband. She’s raw, hollowed out, barely standing. And then a letter arrives from a man in prison. A man she’s never met. A man who writes:

“I’ll wait forever if I have to.”

If that were me? My whole brain would pull the emergency brake, spinning out. Your husband just died, and suddenly you’re someone’s object of attention. Someone’s Forever 👩‍❤️‍👨? From prison 🚨?

Already, the tension and unease are delicious.

And honestly, that’s the book’s strongest opening trick: the mystery of Dante. His tone. Confidence. His insistence that he knows her…really knows her. It hooks you in that slow creeping way where you start checking over your shoulder for shadows without meaning to.

“You’re the chaos. You’re the storm. The one creating the high winds and choppy seas you have to navigate. You’re the source of everything that’s happening. In other words, you’re the one with the power.”

But here’s the part I wasn’t prepared for (even going in as blind as possible):

This book is not a dark romance.

Not even a little.

This is a paranormal story wearing a dark romance hoodie.

Ghost 👻. Visions. A dead husband whose presence should be gone, but somehow isn’t. Reality-bending in ways that make Kayla question her sanity (and even the reader), and make the reader question what kind of story this actually is.

And then there’s Aidan. Broody. Quiet. Magnetic 🧲 in that “I haven’t even spoken, and you’re already picturing your future (house 🏡, kids 👶, and dog🐕)” kind of way. Kayla simmers 🥵for him. Honestly, I did too. He’s the only character who feels solid when everything else starts to tilt sideways.

But the deeper you go, the more you see that a 5-year-old did the stitching.

pen pal by jt geissinger taken by the diary of a reader in a flatlay with annotating supplies and flowers

“I learned that love means nothing unless it’s acted upon. Love isn’t real without intent. It’s a verb. It isn’t passive.”

Dante—the entire premise of the blurb—vanishes for long stretches. Halfway through the book, I realized we’d only interacted with him a handful of times (not even). For a story called Pen Pal, he’s barely a whisper in the background. If he’s meant to be a pillar of the plot (the way the blurb suggests), he needed more page time, more urgency, more everything. Anything.

And Kayla…

Sweet girl, but the emotional whiplash had me holding my neck. She doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she believes in psychics… She’s grounded, then spiraling, then abruptly fine again. Her reactions feel less like character development and more like someone shaking a snow globe and watching the snow scatter within the confines of the dome.

The story desperately needed flashbacks. A foundation. Something to show us who Kayla was with Michael, what she lost, what was broken. Instead, we’re told fragments without feeling the weight of them, which makes the paranormal unraveling feel disconnected rather than haunting, as I expect the author was shooting for.

By the time I hit the 70% mark, I kept waiting for the threads to tighten. For the clues to click. Instead, I kept feeling like I’d missed entire chapters somewhere.

“We’re not introverts. We’re misanthropes. Big difference.”

But then came the ending…

Oh, the ending.

It was good.

Surprisingly good.

The kind that makes you sit back for a moment and think, okay… okay, now we’re cooking with gas.

But here’s the thing: a strong ending can’t fix a story that wandered in circles to get to that point.

And I can’t ignore the genre problem. If this had been marketed honestly…correctly, paranormal with romantic elements, readers would have gone in with the right expectations. It is weird that both marketing and the blurb for this are packaged as a dark romance when it is anything but. That single decision is responsible for half of the disappointment surrounding it. This wasn’t a failed romance. But what do I know 😒

It was a misshelved book.

My first J.T. Geissinger.

The writing? Solid.

The atmosphere? Ehhh immersive esque.

The execution. Frustrating.

What could have been great ended up being flushed down the toilet and flipped the middle finger while it was swirling the bowl.

⭐ READ THIS IF YOU LIKE…

Paranormal stories that blur the edge between reality and the supernatural
Mysterious letters from strangers who know too much and say too little
Atmospheric plots that feel like walking through fog with a lantern
Broody love interests who steal attention without lifting a finger
Unreliable narration and heroines questioning what’s real
Twists that make you rethink every chapter that came before
Romance as a subplot, not the spine
Haunting, grief-soaked storytelling that lingers long after you close the book