Nora
is a literary agent who agrees to accompany her younger sister, Libby, to
Sunshine Falls, NC, for a month in August.
The town is the setting for a best-selling novel that one of Nora’s most
successful clients has written. Libby
tries to break down Nora’s all-work-and-no-play image by creating a checklist
of things to accomplish in Sunshine Falls—go skinny-dipping, ride a horse,
sleep under the stars, and save a floundering local business, among other
things. One item is specifically for
Nora—go on dates with two locals. Libby
herself is married with two young daughters but appears to be struggling with a
personal issue that she refuses to share with Nora, who has tried to be both
mother and father to Libby for most of their lives. Charlie Lastra, the executive editor at a NY publishing
house, passed on the Sunshine Falls novel, but Nora (literally) runs into him
in a bar there. Too convenient? Too coincidental? Who cares?
On the one hand I think of this novel as a guilty pleasure, but it has
some of the best verbal sparring I have ever read. Yes, it’s a rom-com, but I was hooked by the sparkling
repartee as much as by the smoldering love story. I must be a romantic at heart, because this
is one of those books that I just cannot get out of my head.
