Two women fall in love on a North Carolina flower farm despite the con that brought them together in Mazey Eddings's steamy sapphic romance, Late Bloomer. Struggling artist Opal is surprised when her terrible friend gives her a belated birthday gift: a scratch-off lottery ticket. She's absolutely shocked when she wins $500,000.
Impulsive Opal jumps at the chance to start over and finally pursue her art as a career when she sees a flower farm for sale on Facebook Marketplace. After only a short conversation with the seller, Opal exchanges a check for the deed, but it will come as no surprise to readers that the sweet, generous woman who sold Opal this dream wasn't exactly straightforward.
Grieving farmer Pepper has been searching for her beloved Grandma Lou's will for months, but in the will's absence, Pepper's grifter mother inherited the Thistle and Bloom farm, and it apparently now belongs to Opal.
Eddings (A Brush with Love) skillfully takes a far-fetched premise and turns it into a funny, heartfelt romance. Sunshiney Opal and grumpy Pepper find common ground in their worries about failing as adults and their experiences of manipulation by those closest to them. Opal's sisters and Pepper's spirited queer friend group provide comic relief and the support both women need as they work to find a way out of the farm's dire financial straits.
Late Bloomer enchants with humor and heat, nuanced representations of neurodiversity--Opal self-identifies as neurodivergent and Pepper is autistic--and an especially swoony grump with a heart of gold. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian and freelance reviewer