A “true crime romance” sounds like a bad idea — but Alicia Thompson pulls off the concept in her big-hearted and surprisingly moving debut, Love in the Time of Serial Killers. The novel’s narrator, Phoebe, began reading a true crime as a teen, and now, in her late twenties, she’s writing her doctoral dissertation on the genre.

Over the summer, in between semesters, she moves into her recently deceased father’s home to prepare to sell it. In the dead of night, as she pulls up to the house, she’s startled by new neighbor Sam. A combination of pre-existing trust issues and hours of murder podcasts leave her convinced the man who lives across the street is a serial killer.