2022 romance, first of a trilogy. Delilah got out of the tiny Oregon
town of Bright Falls the instant she could, building an
art-photography career in New York and leaving her perfect stepsister
Astrid with the rest of the Mean Girls. But now Astrid is getting
married and wants to employ her as photographer, and Delilah could
really use the money…
But she's not happy about it, and when Claire, one of the
aforementioned Mean Girls, comes on to her in the town's only bar,
Delilah thinks it could be amusing to let Claire succeed and tell her
next morning that she's the spooky girl they all excluded back in the
day. It doesn't work out that way, though.
(Yeah, this is a very American fantasy. A fantasy of a town so small
that there's only one bar, because Small Towns Good, and yet nobody's
anti-gay and skin colour doesn't matter. A fantasy in which someone
can run a small bookshop in said small town, and somehow it doesn't
burn them out trying not to go under in the face of Amazon. Indeed, a
fantasy in which owning your own business, whether that's construction
or photography or bookselling or interior design, puts you on
basically an equal social footing with everyone else who does that;
and nobody here is an employee as more than a temporary phase.)
Claire got pregnant, dumped her life plans to keep the baby, and then
the asshole walked out on her. She's been doing the single mother
thing and running the bookshop, but now the ex has come back and keeps
promising amazing things, forcing her into the role of No-Fun Mother
to her ten-year-old.
That's the least of it; both our protagonists have more complicated
backstories, which are only gradually revealed. Delilah is snarky and
doesn't do commitment; Claire is a nice girl and doesn't do casual.
But neither of them can deny that they have a chemistry that goes
beyond the bedroom.
Even better, this isn't just a story of their romance. Astrid's
prospective husband seems to be a really horrible person, if socially
acceptable, and her friends can't see why she's having anything to do
with him. And Delilah may not think much of Astrid, but she also
can't see why the two of them are together, so she gets drawn into
conspiracy with the former Mean Girls to prod the fiancé into behaving
so abominably that even Astrid must see him for what he is. And
there's Claire's daughter and ex. And Astrid's mother, with whom both
Astrid and Delilah have complicated relationships. It all comes
together rather effectively, and even a third-act breakup both seems
plausible in its own right and leaves me feeling that the couple might
just still work out in the long term.
The whole ritual of expensive wedding preparation reminded me
slightly, of Nora Roberts' Bride Quartet, but there's less of the
casual flaunting of wealth here. These people have real problems to
overcome that are quite separate from questions of who's marrying or
sleeping with whom, and the whole thing is stronger for it.
(Recommended by Russ
Allbery.)