If you’re a fan of romantic thrillers, small college towns and autumnal vibes, Brookfield’s latest homegrown novel might just be for you. Published in July, “Too Close for Comfort” is the debut novel by Brookfield native Téa Gibson under the name T. E. Gibson.
“It takes place in a small college town and kicks off when a sorority girl is murdered on campus, and from there, the mystery and the story begins to unravel,” Gibson told the Landmark. “It does become a bit of a nightmare for our female main character, Lexi, because all of the victims look like her.”
Lexi is a senior at the fictional Silver Falls University in the fictional town of Silver Falls, struggling with love, work and grief. The self-published book also follows the perspective of Wes, a graduate student and Silver Falls native dealing with similar issues. As the murders start piling up, the two friends are drawn together.
Gibson said she hosted a sold-out book launch event earlier this month in Brookfield’s Pub 78 with 65 attendees, which she said left her “at a loss for words.”
“It left me completely in awe of the support and community that I have. I had people that drove up from the St. Louis area to be there, from Wisconsin,” she said. “It was one of the best feelings that you can have, being in a room of people who are supporting you toward something that you’ve dreamed about since you were a kid. It was surreal, really.”
Gibson said the novel’s central premise was borne out of a dream she had while working on a separate fantasy novel.
“The world-building got the better of me. I was burning out with that. Around that same time, I had a dream, which sounds very cliche, but, unfortunately, that is how it happened,” she said. “In the opening scene in the book, you’ll see our two main characters meet on the quad, and that was just a snippet. I had this dream of this one moment in time of these two people, and it really stuck with me.”
But the sinister turns the plot takes came from further back in her life, she said.
“I’ve always really loved thrillers and horror and everything like that. I was like seven years old watching ‘Halloween,’ which is arguably questionable,” she said. “Those types of films have always been some of my favorites, so it was nice to take a step back from fantasy and dive into the world of a thriller. And I am a romantic. I love any book that has some kind of romantic plot or subplot, so I had to put a little bit of romance in there as well.”
Gibson said she wrote the first draft of “Too Close for Comfort” in about three months, from the end of October 2024 through January 2025, taking up much of her free time.
“I was waking up early before work and writing from 6 to 7:30 a.m. and then going to my full-time job. Then, I was getting home, and I was eating dinner, all of that stuff, but then I was going back into writing until probably 10 p.m.,” she said.
Despite the ferocity with which she wrote, the process wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine.
“Once I decided I was going to self-publish, I would say the biggest hiccup was the doubt that really hits you. I think that goes for anybody trying to follow their dreams. You feel very inspired, and you’re like, ‘Yes, I can do this,’ but at some point in the process, you’re going to get hit with that imposter syndrome and that self-doubt,” she said. “Being able to surround myself with people who believed in me until I could believe in myself in those moments was really important.”
While readers are busy savoring her first novel, Gibson said her second is already in the works, with half of the first draft completed. She said she hopes to publish it by next summer.
“It’s been a lot of fun to keep writing, and it is an interconnected standalone to the one that I just released. You’ll see some of the characters come back,” she said. “If my first book, ‘Too Close for Comfort,’ has got some ‘Scream’ elements, the second book is a little bit more like ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer.’ There’s a secret. There are a lot of twists and things that are going to come into play there. It’s fun to put all the pieces together.”
Gibson warned that “Too Close for Comfort” contains discussions of sexual assault and other heavy topics like death, relationship abuse, drug use and depictions of violence. She said she raised money at her book launch event for the Western Illinois Regional Council, which works to improve quality of life and connect people struggling with resources, including survivors of sexual assault.
“When I was writing the book, I was thinking, ‘This is a fun book to write,’ and then I got done and looked a little bit closer at it, and I thought, ‘No, there’s a message here,’” she said. “You do see the abuse cycle play out in the book. For survivors that I know and some of the reviews that I’ve gotten so far, the highest praise that I could get is that I handled that with tact and in a way that empowered survivors.”
“Too Close for Comfort” is available for purchase on Gibson’s website.
