First published 2021
Dillion Stitch never planned to come back to Pearl Lake. Then her brother lands in trouble, and suddenly she is back home running the family business whether she wants to or not. On her first look around the old neighborhood, she walks in on Donovan Firestone, known as Van, completely undressed at the cottage next door. Van turns out to be the grandson of her beloved former neighbor, and the two of them get off to a spectacularly bad start. They bicker at the grocery store, at the dock, all over town. That friction refuses to stay friction. Dillion is carrying the weight of a family that can't seem to hold itself together. Van is dealing with relatives who made clear long ago that he is not welcome among them. Neither of them ever felt like they truly belonged in this small town, and coming back hasn't changed that. But something between them keeps pulling, and Pearl Lake turns out to be the place where both of them have to reckon with everything they left unfinished.
Genres: fiction, romance, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, contemporary-romance
Vibes: bittersweet, character-driven, emotional, heartwarming, intimate
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, forced-proximity, second-chance-romance, small-town-romance
Setting: Pearl Lake
323 pages · Paperback · Montlake