The One

by Mary Flinn

Is following your heart worth having it broken?
Seventeen year-old Chelsea Davenport is winding up the summer before her senior year at her sister Charley’s engagement party. Life is good and uncomplicated in the mountains. She is looking forward to starting school, applying to colleges, dancing again, and all the other things that go with high school…except the boys. Chelsea is sick of boys. And then Kyle Davis appears at the party and turns her world upside down.

There is one person out there who can save your life and change it forever.
When Kyle Davis returns to Snowy Ridge, North Carolina, adrift in a sea of anger and depression following the death of his sister, his banishment to a boys’ school, and ultimately the suicide of his father, he has given up on everything, until he reconnects with Chelsea, an old childhood friend who knows the truth about what has happened to him. At first she doesn’t realize he is just as thunder-struck by her, but then his feelings become clear. Chelsea isn’t the only girl who wants football player Kyle, and the local mean girl, Elle, is loaded for bear and ready to take on anyone to have Kyle for herself. So, who will win his heart? As Kyle begins to fall for Chelsea, she learns a secret that could destroy their relationship. Is the heartache over for Kyle? Can Chelsea help him while remaining true to herself and what she believes? The One is a poignant tale of dealing with loss, coming of age, and exploring first love.
The One is the first in a series of four contemporary new adult romance novels set in both the mountains and the coast of North Carolina.

225 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2014

About the author

A native of North Carolina, award-winning author Mary Flinn long ago fell in love with her state’s mountains and its coast, creating the backdrops for her series of novels, The One, Second Time’s a Charm, Three Gifts, and A Forever Man. With degrees from both the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and East Carolina University, Flinn has retired from her first career as a speech pathologist in the NC public schools since 1981. Writing a novel had always been a dream for Flinn, who began crafting the pages of The One, when her younger daughter left for college at Appalachian State University in 2009. The characters in this book have continued to call to her, wanting more of their story told, which bred the next three books in the series.
Flinn has recently been the recipient of the Reviewers’ Choice First Place Award for Romance Novel in the Reader Views 2011 Literary Book Awards, as well as the Pacific Book Review Best Romance Novel of 2011 for Three Gifts. Second Time’s a Charm, also released in 2011, won an Honorable Mention in the Reader Views Reviewers’ Choice Awards. The Nest, a stand-alone from the Kyle and Chelsea series, won a B.R.A.G. Medallion book award in 2015. Breaking Out, Flinn's second stand-alone was published in 2014. A Girl Like That, released in 2015 is the winner of the Reader Views Literary Book Award, as well as the B.R.A.G. Medallion.
Mary Flinn lives with her husband in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she is at work on her next novel. They have two adult daughters.