A sweet story, straddling the line between warm and bubbly contemporary romance, and a tender, heartrending treatise on loss, grief, and finding one’s path through what may feel overwhelmingly insurmountable.

Pen (Penelope) Auberge is thirty-two years old, a financial wizard and an avid cyclist, with social skills that leave much to be desired, and a history of debilitating panic attacks, stemming from a traumatic and unresolved family loss that occured in her youth.

The story begins as Pen’s world (bordered and made safe by her laser-like focus on numbers, spreadsheets, and a good deal of emotional avoidance), collapses in on itself when she suddenly finds herself unemployed. Acting unusually, on wild impulse and without a clear plan, Pen decamps from her home-town in Minnesota and escapes to sparkly Nashville, where a new life appears to beckon.

As Pen — born biracial and forever finding herself straddling two communities, accepted by neither — struggles to find solace and closure within her own skin, a chance meeting, and an outspoken new friend, may very well open the door to all she has been seeking.

A lovely read, which packs a somewhat unexpected emotional wallop, this is a book to cuddle up with, a cup of tea and a Kleenex box close at hand.

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.