November 18, 2019
In this poignant small-town charmer, Mallery (The Summer of Sunshine and Margot) beautifully illustrates the power of female friendship and the importance of reaching for one’s dreams. After the Los Angeles office of Sophie Lane’s cat products company goes up in flames, she moves her small business back home to Blackberry Island, Wash., where her cousins, Kristine and Amber, also live. Kristine, a stay-at-home mom of three sons, dreams of expanding her weekend business of selling cookies into a full-scale bakery but her husband disapproves. Amber’s 20-year-old daughter, Heather, nurses ambitions of leaving for business school, but is trapped on the island by her codependent mom who relies on Heather for emotional and financial support. Mallery alternates perspective between Sophie, Kristine, and Heather as each woman works to balance her familial and romantic relationships with her career goals. Surrounded by a first-rate cast of supporting characters—most notably Dugan, a hunky tai chi instructor with a secret, who falls for Sophie—Mallery’s women are achingly real. This irresistible, heartfelt story will appeal to romance readers and women’s fiction fans alike. Agent: Annelise Robey, Jane Rotrosen Agency.
November 15, 2019
Mallery's fourth Blackberry Island novel features three cousins?Sophie, a cat supply entrepreneur; Kristine, a wife and mother; and Heather, a 20-year-old juggling multiple part-time jobs to support her mean, dysfunctional mother?who are reunited after Sophie's cat-toy business goes up in flames. While Sophie reopens her business and hires Heather to work for her, Kristine longs to establish her own bakery, but her insecure husband wants her to stay home to cook and clean. Sophie admits that she really is a bad boss, and realizes that if she can't learn from her employees, her business won't thrive. Kristine decides to use a small inheritance to go into business, a decision with painful repercussions. Sophie gets involved with gorgeous hunk Dugan, who teaches tai-chi on the beach, but their relationship founders when she discovers who he really is. And Heather wants to go to college but is thwarted by her selfish mother. Mallery portrays a trio of women relying on each other for support as they struggle to discover what they really want in life and how to get it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)