Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan (Nora Goes Off Script; It's a Love Story) is another wonderful summer romance perfect for fans of Carley Fortune and Abby Jimenez. Single mother and kindergarten teacher Dolly Brick has moved home to Whitfield, R.I., for the summer to help her father with their family's struggling business, Brick Fish House, and caring for her disabled brother, Christopher.
While delivering shrimp, Dolly stops to change a tire for millionaire Stewart Whitfield (yes, the town is named after his family). A photo of them ends up in the New York Post, giving Stewart the idea to offer Dolly a shocking proposition: if she pretends to date him for the summer, he'll pay her enough to replace the roof on her dad's house and address some of the issues at Brick Fish House. It turns out that Stewart's fiancée has just spectacularly ditched him in favor of a New York Yankees pitcher. Stewart wants to imply that he and his fiancée parted ways amicably, and that he's been seeing Dolly for a while. Dolly can't resist the financial lure and resigns herself to laughing sycophantically at Stewart's jokes all summer. But to her surprise, Stewart turns out to be genuinely funny, kind, and good with her 13-year-old son.
Poignant and amusing, Dolly All the Time is a perfectly atmospheric read. Readers will long to sail with Stewart and Dolly and shop for fresh seafood at the Brick Fish House. With a likable, realistic main character, a pitch-perfect New England setting, and laugh-out-loud parenting moments balanced by day-to-day stress of finances and family, Dolly All the Time is contemporary romance at its best. --Jessica Howard, former bookseller, freelance book reviewer