B- so 3.5 stars This book was a sweet romance but also a pretty solid family drama. At 32, Georgina Powell has been in something of a holding pattern since high school. A family tragedy put her dreams of art school on hold and she has instead lived at home with her parents and helped to run their department store in the small town of Wickham Falls, West Virginia.
Even though she's sometimes nervous about it, Georgina is taking steps to move out on her own and to open a small specialty store. And just as her life is changing, in walks Langston Cooper, the new newspaper editor.
Georgina and Langston had known each other as children but they weren't particularly close before Langston went off to college and a career as a war correspondent. Seeing them get reacquainted and explore the chemistry between them made for a sweet, slow burn romance.
The chemistry between Georgina and Langston is immediate but the romance develops slowly. Both leads are adjusting to a lot of change in their lives and I appreciated how they supported each other and gave one another some time and space to process. A fair amount of the book also deals with Georgina's bid for independence from her parents. The scenes between the heroine and her father are particularly strong, but some of the conflict involving her mother's grief and its affects on the family gets rather glossed over.
I also liked the town itself. The town is fairly diverse and people have real-life problems, such as dealing with local government red tape or trying to keep local business alive as big box stores undercut their prices. That matches my experiences in small-town America much more than the all-white idyllic dream towns I sometimes encounter in fiction.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and the main couple. If you like a slower-paced romance, this one is sweet. It does gets marred a little at the end, though, by some leaping to conclusions in a single bound which manufactures unneeded conflict. Still, Wickham Falls is a lovely town to explore.