Kristan Higgins (If You Only Knew) returns to Manningsport, N.Y., and the Blue Heron Vineyard with a love story that begins with a proposal gone wrong and flashes back over a relationship that the words "it's complicated" can't begin to describe.
Connor O'Rourke has loved Jessica Dunn for years, but the course of that love has not run smooth. Their first meeting as preteens ended in the destruction of her family dog after it attacked Connor. Though blameless, Connor couldn't get the time of day from Jessica from then through high school, although it seemed every other boy could. In their 20s, a chance meeting at a wine class ended in a passionate night and a morning made awkward by his big mouth. After subsequent years of on-again off-again contact, Connor pops the question, but Jessica turns him down flat.
Jessica's worked hard to shed her old reputation as the daughter of drunken trailer trash and her promiscuity-inspired nickname "Jessica Does." Her younger brother, Davey, whose fetal alcohol syndrome renders him dependent, will always stay her first priority, and he refuses to accept Connor. Besides, she knows her past has left her undeserving of a happily ever after.
Higgins fearlessly navigates a rocky, hard-won romance, finding harmony between small-town charm and dark issues, including alcoholism and child neglect. Jessica and Connor's relationship may have its ups and downs, but this cross between gritty realism and starry-eyed enchantment will have readers cheering when the lovers inevitably find their way to each other. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads