Mother Hater

Being the last single woman standing in your co-parenting pact is one thing—watching your three best friends fall in love while you're still holding the whole operation together is quite another.

As a single mom navigating a crumbling brownstone and a life that refuses to cooperate, she needs two things: a fresh start and a contractor who shows up on time and stays in his lane. What she gets is Marcus—handsome, infuriatingly confident, and completely unwilling to treat this job like a simple transaction. From the moment he walks through her front door with his toolbelt and his opinions, she knows this renovation is going to be anything but straightforward.

Their clashes are immediate and electric. She wants him professional and invisible; he acts like he's already part of the household. Somehow, between the dust and the disagreements, he's charming her roommates, winning over her kids, and slowly dismantling every carefully constructed wall she's built around herself—and not just the ones he's been paid to knock down.

Mother Hater is a warm, witty single-parent romance set against the chaos of renovation season and the messiness of reopening your heart. Daphne Elliot delivers simmering tension, laugh-out-loud banter, and a love story that builds as steadily and irresistibly as a house being put back together—brick by brick, room by room.

If you've ever sworn off something only to discover you wanted it all along, this is your next favorite read.