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Bank Fraud
Forever Kind of Love follows a woman who returns to her Ohio hometown to begin life anew after her husband’s financial crimes leave her emotionally drained. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
In my hometown, there was an article in the local paper about this man who was well known in the community and had committed bank fraud. I thought about his wife and wondered if she knew about any of his crimes. That was the preface that started my plot. I wanted to do a story about a woman who had no clue her husband was a criminal and how it affected her when she lost everything.
Zach Hayes is dealing with both creative uncertainty and his father’s decline. What drew you to give him those particular struggles?
I’m a musician and had a familiarity with that recording world. My mother also had dementia in later years, so I knew firsthand how that affected a family and wanted to show how the beginning stages, when a person is conscious of what’s happening, can be scary and challenging to everyone.
Your writing leans into sincerity and emotional directness. Was that a conscious stylistic choice?
Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment. I try to dig deep into my characters so whatever they’re experiencing is real to the reader.
Can you give us a peek inside the next book in the Cedar Hill series? Where will it take readers?
I’m excited about the next book because my female protagonist is a state trooper dealing with the aftermath of a deadly incident. Her brother is intellectually challenged and becomes an endearing secondary character. Another musician comes into town, related to Zach through marriage, although he is changing careers. Stay tuned!
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Struggling to revive his career and reconnect with his estranged father, Zach sparks an undeniable yet unwelcome chemistry with Willow. As her estranged husband seeks forgiveness, and Zach battles his own demons, Willow must confront her painful past and decide if she’s willing to risk her heart again. Caught between heartbreak and hope, can they overcome their fears and build a future together?
Forever Kind of Love
Forever Kind of Love follows Willow Mason as she returns to her Ohio hometown after her husband’s financial crimes leave her emotionally scorched and materially stripped bare, and it pairs her with Zach Hayes, a country musician whose homecoming is shadowed by creative drift and his father’s dementia. Around them, Cedar Hill becomes more than a backdrop. The bookstore Willow manages, the unfinished apartment and darkroom she tries to reclaim, George’s birdhouses, and the threatened reshaping of Main Street all feed a story about what it means to begin again when pride has already been broken open.
I liked that the novel’s emotional center isn’t really the flirtation, though the chemistry is there from the start. It’s the gentler, sadder current running underneath it. The scenes with George Hayes gave the book its pulse for me. When he wanders off, and Willow has to search for him, or when he speaks with startling clarity about no longer being able to run the hardware store he built with his own labor, the story stops feeling merely cozy and starts feeling tender in a more hard-won way. I also appreciated the way Willow’s recovery is tied to work, art, and dignity. Her photography, her darkroom, and even her stubborn effort to stand back up financially all make her feel like more than a romantic heroine waiting to be chosen.
This is a book I admired for its sincerity. The writing has warmth and momentum, and Bagby is good at domestic texture, at meals being cooked, rooms being cleaned, little rituals of care accumulating into intimacy. But the language can also be very direct, even emphatic. Zach’s celebrity aura and the Marissa complication introduce a slightly soapier register, and there were moments when I could feel the story leaning into familiar romance machinery. Still, I found myself forgiving a lot because the book’s heart is so plainly in the right place. It believes in decency, in repair, in the idea that love is not just heat but steadiness, patience, and showing up when someone’s life has gone sideways.
I feel like Forever Kind of Love is less interested in dazzling the reader than in comforting them honestly, and that ambition suits it. I found the story affecting, especially whenever it slowed down long enough to let grief, memory, and self-reclamation breathe. I’d recommend it to readers who like small-town contemporary romance with an earnest emotional core, a caregiving thread, and a heroine rebuilding a life as much as finding a partner. It’s a soft-hearted book about bruised people learning that tenderness can still be trusted.
Pages: 312 | ISBN : 978-1509264308
