Book Lovers

Nora Stephens is a literary agent with sharp edges and sharper instincts, the kind of woman who keeps her city heels on through every storm. She is decidedly not the sweet small-town heroine who reforms a brooding hero — she's the cold ex who gets dumped in chapter two so the real love story can begin. So when her younger sister Libby drags her to the postcard town of Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, for a month of forced relaxation and a checklist meant to transform Nora's life, Nora goes along mostly to keep her sister happy.

The trouble is, Sunshine Falls keeps throwing her into the path of Charlie Lastra, a brusque, exacting book editor she already clashed with back in Manhattan. He's the last person she expected to find in the middle of nowhere, and the very last person she wants to keep running into at the local diner. But proximity has a way of softening even the most fortified defenses, and their barbed conversations start to feel less like sparring and more like something neither of them planned for.

As the weeks unfold, Nora confronts the role she's always played — the dependable, hard-charging sister who sacrifices everything — and begins to wonder what her own happy ending might actually look like. Witty, warm, and surprisingly tender beneath the banter, this is a story about sisterhood, second chances, and learning that the person everyone overlooks might be the one most deserving of the spotlight.

First published in 2022.