Hello! I’m Crystal Nikish.
I write characters who think too much, feel too hard, and fall in love anyway.I’m a marketing strategist by day and a writer of kissing books by late, late night. I hold an English bachelor’s and an MBA with a concentration in Data & Analytics and was a 2023 WriteHive mentee. My manuscript, The Boyfriend Variables, won second place in the Georgia Romance Writers Maggie Awards, in the Pre-published Contemporary Romance category. When I’m not writing, I enjoy perusing the Washington, DC restaurant scene, canning my own homemade strawberry jam, and trying to convince anyone that will listen that pop punk is not, in fact, dead.
Laws of Chemistry
Status: Completed
Dr. Violet Hayes has never been enough. That’s what she’s believed since her former academic mentor—and toxic ex—stole her research and derailed her career. Hooking up with him again earns her a walk of shame through a downpour, just as her best friend announces she’s moving out. When she steps inside a mystic shop for refuge, a fortuneteller gives her a love potion that promises to make her the most fascinating person in any room. As a woman of science, she writes it off—until a deeply unserious experiment makes a bar full of strangers hang onto her every word.
Bennett Montgomery needs space from the pressure-cooker future his powerful family has planned for him. After his engagement to a socialite heiress implodes, taking over his cousin’s Brooklyn lease seems like a harmless escape. Then his new roommate turns out to be a brilliant bioengineer who sees him for who he is, not just his name, and their flirtation becomes a lifeline. So when Bennett needs a date for his parents’ anniversary week in the Hamptons, he asks Violet to pose as his girlfriend. She’s the perfect shield against his family’s campaign to reunite him with his ex-fiancée. Turning the week into a casual situationship should be fine, as long as they follow one simple rule: no feelings, just friends.However, one social faux pas after another convinces Violet to use the potion as chemical courage—even as their situationship sparks into something dangerously real. As his family tightens its grip, Bennett must choose between duty and the woman he loves. And when her former mentor steals the potion to weaponize it, Violet must stop him—and believe she was enough without it all along.
The Boyfriend Variables
Status: Completed
Harper Holloway always had a Perfect Life Plan™. Become the star data scientist of her mother’s political consulting firm. (Check.) Land a presidential campaign. (Check.) Win the election, make partner, and secure Mom’s everlasting love and approval. (Almost check.) Now, to find a date for her sister's destination wedding and maybe even find true love? (Well...) But it's okay. She’s going to use the power of mathematics to create a love algorithm and find the perfect boyfriend.
Evan Lockwood is not boyfriend material. After his promising Silicon Valley career combusted, he now pursues nothing more stressful than finding his next hookup. When he meets Harper, a gorgeous, but prickly data scientist running a dating experiment out of the bookshop below his apartment, he sees startup potential in her algorithm. They team up to build a dating app—one that could fund his next (few) turns around the world, or even offer him a chance to get back into entrepreneurship. If he's brave enough to put it all on the line again.But after a series of disastrous dates bring Harper and her low-scoring wingman closer together, Evan keeps finding reasons why the perfect boyfriend isn’t perfect for her—despite needing the experiment to succeed. And as her love algorithm mysteriously fails, Harper starts to question everything about her life, including whether she’s in the right career in the first place and if her mother would ever forgive her for rejecting the Holloway legacy. In the end, she’ll have to decide whether she wants to complete her Perfect Life Plan™ or if she should risk following her heart instead of the numbers. After all, not everything that counts can be counted.
Only In Dreams
Status: Concepting
After a brutal public breakup with her fiancé, up-and-coming chef Sadie Whitman returns home to the snow-covered ski resort she fled after her mother’s death, expecting nothing more than a temporary escape. Instead, she finds a struggling family business and Reid Reynolds—the boy she left behind—still living in the old mountain cabin where her childhood ended.Now equal owners of the resort, Sadie and Reid have one winter to turn things around—and a Food and Wine Festival might be their best shot. But planning it together means competing visions, old resentments, and far too much time in each other’s company. As their rivalry gives way to an unexpected partnership, and the strange dreams between them grow harder to dismiss, Sadie begins to wonder if success means chasing the life she planned—or having the courage to build a different one with the man she never quite forgot.
