In the Next Room

by Heather Grey

After ten years of distance, only one wall separates them now

Talia Hart is a free-spirited artist bartending her way through her troubles. She's collecting rejection emails, chasing women who never stay past sunrise, and keeping real intimacy safely out of reach since her ex shattered her world. Not that it's ever worked for anyone.

Natalie Bennett runs her life like a spreadsheet. Her love life runs on the same system, with the same exhausting results. Every partner follows the ideal a nice guy who mimics everything she's been told to want. But that means she's still waiting for the spark everyone talks about. She's watched enough romcoms to know exactly what it's supposed to feel like, and now she's wondering if she's broken or if she's just been asking the wrong question entirely.

Talia and Natalie were once inseparable. High school best friends who shared rain-soaked porches, movie nights, and the kind of easy closeness that felt like it could survive anything. Then college happened, and distance, and the slow drift that neither of them ever quite found the words to stop.

When a roommate emergency lands them under the same roof in Brooklyn, ten years of separation fall away. So does something Talia has been running from for a decade, and a question Natalie has never thought to ask herself.

In The Next Room is a slow-burn sapphic romance about the courage it takes to stop running from the person who's always felt like home.

Dual POV • Forced proximity • Friends to lovers • Second chance • Slow burn

Genres: Friends To Lovers, Lesbian

380 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 15, 2026

About the author

Heather Grey is a sapphic romance author with a theater background, a weakness for slow-burn love stories, and a coffee habit she has no intention of addressing.

She writes about women who fall in love in the spaces between — between scenes, between breaths, between who they've been and who they're becoming. Her characters are messy, tender, and a little too stubborn for their own good.

Reviews

[Diane (IF U'RE PRIVATE, PLEASE SKIP ME!!!) Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars!
A somewhat nice and at times entertaining story..

[cloverxheart · Rating 2 out of 5]

I always feel bad, leaving a bad review. But did I enjoy anything about this? No I didn't.

The writing isn't bad by any means, but it didn't work for me, for some reason.
I didn't really like the characters either.
It also felt extremely repetitive to me, like I was reading the same scenes over and over again.
The pacing was also throwing me off.
They realized they had still feelings for each other rather early on, yet the book kept going for like 200 more pages (in which nothing new or interesting happened)

The author kept writing about their emotions and the feelings they supposedly had for each other, but she hardly wrote any scenes in which they were actually doing stuff together or really spending time with each other.
If she did, it was just tell and now show.

Some of the dialogue seemed rather unnatural and strange, especially in the scene where they finally confess their feelings too each other. No real person would talk like that.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not too bad. Slow-burn, friend-to-lover romance with years apart before becoming close friends and eventual lovers.

What I don’t get is how 2 really good friends, as close as they were, somehow just drifted apart? Did I miss something while reading In the Next Room?

3.5 ⭐️

[zagzig · Rating 5 out of 5]

dual pov leads named Talia and Natalie with multiple nicknames was certainly one of the naming decisions of all time

I did really enjoy this book though. Talia and Natalie had a very intense, complicated high school friendship that fizzled out for reasons that are suggested at but never really confirmed. nearly a decade later, they find themselves living together and picking up where they left off. naturally, where they left off was intense unresolved romantic feelings at least one of them really wasn't ready to confront

there is a lot of time spent on the friendship between Talia and Natalie, and how they pick up where things left off. it's very intimate and caring and a lovely read, with enough 'okay why aren't these idiots kissing yet' to build tension but not too much that it becomes silly. I love a book where there's an obvious connection between the leads, where it's shown through acts of care and consistently being there for each other rather than - as can happen in more insta lovey books - the characters just talking a lot about how incredible the connection is it doesn't matter it's only been a week

I could have used more details on what happened with the past friendship - you see fallout it had on both their lives, but the book never really goes all the way in drawing the connections. like Natalie completely cuts off a friendship because her friend got engaged, which is a wild decision I assumed we'd return to. but it's never questioned or revisited? to the point I'm questioning whether it's related to Natalie losing her friendship with Talia years ago or just establishing a pattern that Natalie will drop a friend over nothing

still, very sweet, very sentimental, a lot of two people caring for each other, and the big resolution at the end comes with a big conversation where they talk through every step on their idiots to lovers journey

[Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you need a new roommate in NYC, what better option than your childhood bestie you may have had a crush on. That’s in the past! Talia is an artist at heart and by day, and a talented, showy, flirty bartender by night. Natalie runs corporate events with a rigid type A personality, so maybe being around Talia more will help her relax.

Talia knew she was a lesbian at a young age, coming out to Natalie before anyone else. Natalie lived her life as Talia’s straight best friend. But is she really straight? Let’s not focus on that; instead they have a Halloween costume contest to win and friends to compete with. Included: a Heated Rivalry-esque club dance scene, spectacular Halloween costumes, and a dance competition…on rollerskates!

This queer awakening will keep you laughing and cheering. Anyone who loves a cheesy romcom will relate to Natalie and Talia and hopefully fall in love with them as much as I did.

[Marina Feliz Imba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, the word that describes this book for me is “mediocre.” Even though slow-burn friends-to-lovers books are my favorite category, this one was just too sweet. I mean, even at the end, after so many years of pining, instead of finally grabbing each other, they sat there talking for an hour before kissing. In my opinion, when you want someone for that long, you can’t really hold yourself back once the moment finally comes. How these two had that much patience with all the talking, I honestly don’t know.

Anyway, I’m giving it 3 stars. I think that’s a fair rating because, okay, it may not be a book I’ll ever think about again, but it definitely wasn’t terrible either.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute book. I do love slow burn romances. My only complaint is that I felt the ending was a bit rushed.