A very good return to hometown romance

This author is quickly becoming one of my favourites. Her stories have the right balance of romance, humour and drama. The characters are flawed but relatable. The conflicts sound credible and realistic.

Quinn McKinley has been away from her small hometown for seventeen years. She lives in New York where she is a successful estate agent but now she is back searching for the property deal of a lifetime. What she wasn’t expecting was to meet again with her childhood best friend, Sawyer Kent…

This is a return to hometown romance mixed with a friends-to-lovers trope. Quinn left the small town of Kings Ford for personal reasons to never return until now. Her journey back will make her confront unresolved issues of the past, her family and her former best friend, Sawyer Kent. Sawyer, on her part, also has issues to deal with and the reunion with Quinn triggers her own journey of transformation.

I loved the chemistry between the main characters, it builds up from cool to combustive. Ms. McCallan writes intimate scenes very well and I particularly like the way she sometimes holds back to keep the reader hanging. It works really well to maintain the interest and move the plot forward.

As I said above, the conflicts in Ms. McCallan’s books don’t sound contrived, in this case, it was organic to the story and believable. The “villain” really got on my nerves because he sounded realistically like a self-centered egotistical jerk. Kudos to the author to irritate me so much that I wanted to punch him. The rest of the characters were all very well fleshed out, especially Quinn’s sister.

The small-town setting, the depictions of the landscape and the descriptions of Sawyer’s talent for restoring old mechanical games, gave the story more depth and kept me engaged.

Overall, a very good return to hometown romance with a perfect balance of love and drama. 4.5 stars.

ARC provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.