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Whispers of Blue Ridge
Whispers of Blue Ridge is a contemporary small-town romance with a strong family-drama thread, and at its core it follows Savannah Gray, a young woman tied to her family’s North Georgia winery, and Jake Rollins, a rodeo rider who arrives in Blue Ridge carrying guilt, charm, and unfinished business. Their connection starts with friction, slides into attraction, and then opens into something heavier as the book folds in grief, old wounds, buried truths, and the question of whether home is a place, a duty, or a person. It’s very much a story about love, but also about healing and what it costs to finally face the past.
What stayed with me most was the setting and the mood. Author Nina Purtee clearly loves this world of vineyards, mountain roads, fairs, rodeos, and small-town rituals, and that affection comes through on the page. I could feel the dust, the chill in the morning air, the hush around the vines, the buzz of the fairgrounds. The writing is earnest and direct, and when it works best, it gives the book a warm, openhearted pull. I also liked that the romance is built on glances, banter, and emotional hesitation before it leans into bigger feelings. Now and then, the dialogue or inner thoughts spell things out more than I needed. Still, I found the sincerity hard to resist. The book wears its heart right out in the open, and I mean that as a compliment.
I also appreciated the author’s choices around burden and responsibility. Savannah is not just waiting around to be swept off her feet. She is rooted, tired, loyal, and quietly restless, which made her feel more grounded to me than a lot of romance leads. Jake, on the other hand, arrives with the shape of a familiar romantic hero, but the book gives him pain and conscience, not just swagger. I liked that the story keeps circling the idea that people can get trapped by grief just as easily as they can be held by love. The Italy thread, the family secrets, and the accident in Jake’s past all push the novel beyond a simple cowboy-meets-winery-girl setup. Not every turn surprised me, and some scenes felt more melodramatic than natural, but I never felt the book was cynical or lazy. It wants to believe that people can choose tenderness over fear.
I think this is the kind of romance that will work best for readers who want emotional comfort, scenic atmosphere, and a story that takes both longing and family history seriously. I would recommend Whispers of Blue Ridge most to readers who enjoy contemporary romance, women’s fiction, and small-town stories where healing matters as much as chemistry. If you want a heartfelt, conversational, big-emotion read with wine country, rodeo energy, and characters trying to make peace with the lives they’ve inherited, this one has a genuine pull.
Pages: 252
Old Hurt and New Possibility
The One Who Ghosted Me follows a guarded geologist who discovers her new project lead is the man who ghosted her five years ago and now wants a second chance to make things right. Why explore ghosting as a central emotional engine?
Ghosting has become such a familiar wound in modern dating, and my first instinct was the same as most people’s—it felt like a cowardly act. But I wondered, what if it wasn’t? What if someone disappeared not because they didn’t care, but because they cared so much they didn’t see another way out? That question, and the emotional wreckage it leaves on both sides, became the foundation of Amelia and Jonathan’s story.
What drew you to writing Amelia as someone fiercely protective of her independence, and what makes her different from typical contemporary romance heroines?
I’m a deeply independent woman, and I’ve always been drawn to a heroine who can take care of herself rather than waiting for someone else to provide for her. But romance also holds this fantasy of being truly taken care of by your partner, and the friction between those two desires can cause real internal conflict.
Amelia is different because she’s a scientist and outdoorsy, which isn’t common in the genre. After twenty years as a geologist myself, I wanted to write a woman whose competence is just part of who she is, not a quirk, not a fake-it-til-you-make-it costume. She knows what she’s doing out there. Trusting someone with her heart was the harder job.
Why do you think readers are drawn to unresolved love stories, and what makes second-chance romance especially powerful for you as a writer?
I believe most people carry at least one unresolved love story—the one that got away, or the one that ended before it should have. Reading about characters who get back together and finish what was left unfinished lets us vicariously experience that possibility. It’s about hope.
As a writer, second-chance romance gives me something a first-meeting story can’t. The characters know exactly which buttons to press and exactly where the wounds are. That history creates a kind of tension that’s impossible to manufacture from scratch. I find that space, between old hurt and new possibility, compelling to write. And for this series in particular, the idea of second chances runs far deeper than one book. But readers will have to keep reading to understand what I mean by that.
Is this the first book in the series? If so, when is the next book coming out, and what can your fans expect in the next story?
The One Who Ghosted Me is Book 1 of the Fontaine Series. Book 2, Melanie and Brandon’s story, will be released early in 2027. Book 2 turns up the heat with an enemies-to-lovers pairing that readers will have already seen coming.
Melanie Foxx doesn’t believe in soulmates. Brandon Fontaine definitely doesn’t believe in past lives. Forced to team up for Amelia and Jonathan’s wedding-venue challenge, they clash over everything—except their inconvenient attraction.
But when old family wounds collide with eerie flashes of “we’ve been here before,” they’ll have to choose: repeat the same heartbreak … or finally rewrite the story their souls keep trying to tell.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
Rainmere, Washington. In this close-knit Pacific Northwest town, Amelia Preston refuses to give up control. With people counting on her at home, the romantically gun-shy young widow stays focused on turning her contract job into a full-time career. But her opportunity to land a position with benefits comes under threat when she learns the new project lead is the guy who swept her off her feet five years ago… and then vanished.
Jonathan Fontaine longs to make things right. Still shouldering a mountain of guilt over the woman he let slip away, the outdoorsy geologist hopes the next three months of working side-by-side will end in forgiveness. So when she needs help avoiding her friends’ unwanted matchmaking, he steps out of his carefully constructed personal life and offers himself up as a fake boyfriend.
Insisting on strict boundaries to avoid getting burned again, a nervous Amelia softens her rules in the face of their undeniable chemistry. But though Jonathan might be hearing wedding bells, he doesn’t know how to break free from family duty and embrace his own happiness.
Is this an all-too-common repeat heartbreak, or a rare second chance at true love?
The One Who Ghosted Me is the flirty first book in the Fontaine Family contemporary romance series, featuring second-chance workplace romance with touches of the supernatural. If you like emotional depth balanced with humor, characters you’ll want as friends, and places that feel like they’re part of the cast, then you’ll adore Erica Devon’s addictive tale.
Buy The One Who Ghosted Me for a swoon-worthy escape today!
Return To Holden
In Return to Holden, author Bob Adamov drops a battered drifter, Ty Brady, into the rain-washed streets of Southport, North Carolina, where a chance collision in a cozy corner store leads him to Bree—a young woman who’s blind but unnervingly perceptive—and to Bree’s Aunt Jo, who offers Ty a cheap apartment above her carriage house if he’ll trade rent for repairs. The setup feels almost like a seaside reset button—until the book steadily reveals why Ty ran in the first place: combat ghosts, contractor work gone wrong, and a violent past that refuses to stay “back there.”
What surprised me is how much the novel wants you to live in its setting before it asks you to fear for it. The early chapters luxuriate in porch swings, the Cape Fear River, freighters sliding through the channel, and the small-town mechanics of kindness, especially via Weeds, the local handyman-oracle who is equal parts comic relief and grizzled guardian. Bree, too, is written with a steadiness I appreciated: her blindness isn’t treated as a decorative vulnerability so much as a different instrument panel—she reads tone, tempo, hesitation. That makes the romance work better than it has to, because it grows out of attention rather than just proximity.
Then the darker thread tightens. Ty’s confessions land with a blunt, unvarnished ache, PTSD rendered less as a plot coupon than as a nightly weather system he can’t outrun. And when the antagonists start closing in (the kind of men who speak in threats like it’s their native language), the book pivots into genuine romantic suspense: a hunted man trying to become ordinary, a new love forming right where danger can find it, and collateral grief that hits the household hard. The story occasionally telegraphs its emotional beats, but the sincerity won me over, and the ending, centering on Bree’s courage and deepening love for Ty and Ty’s decision to stop running, feels earned.
This one’s for readers who like romantic suspense, coastal mystery, small-town thriller, and second-chance romance, the kind of story where danger prowls just beyond the porch light, but community still counts for something. If you enjoy Nicholas Sparks’s The Notebook but sometimes wish the tide brought in more menace along with the moonlight, you’ll feel at home here. Return to Holden is a story of love, loss, and survival.
Pages: 225 | ASIN : B0GBPV786N
The One Who Ghosted Me
Erica Devon’s The One Who Ghosted Me drops me into a second-chance collision: Amelia Preston, still raw from being abruptly cut off by Jonathan five years earlier, is rebuilding a life in Rainmere, Washington, juggling contract geology work and a strange, high-security assistant gig for an unseen employer (WJ7 Inc.) at a looming estate. Then Jonathan reappears as the lead on a high-stakes merger asset project, and the past isn’t just unresolved, it’s booby-trapped, with old loyalties, new pressures, and a secret that finally explains why he vanished.
That old-school, can’t-look-away tension Devon builds when two people know each other’s soft spots and still choose each other’s bruises is enthralling. Amelia’s voice has a flinty, self-protective edge that feels earned (she’s not “guarded” in the decorative way; she’s done), and Jonathan is written with a believable burden, competent, loyal, and quietly wrecked by the consequences of doing the right thing. When the book finally lays out the whistleblower/protective-custody truth behind the ghosting, it doesn’t erase the damage, but it does sharpen the moral dilemma into something you can bite into.
I came for the romance reparations and stayed for the atmosphere. The story keeps slipping little splinters of mystery under the skin. An old journal, a tucked-away map, a chapel with a digital lockbox, and those recurring “that’s odd” sensations (the metallic smell, the forest’s almost-guiding presence, the too-perfect feeling of rightness) add a faintly uncanny undertow without tipping the book into full paranormal. And when the external world punches in, merger fallout, professional brinkmanship, and the Brazil transfer that lands like a guillotine, the love story doesn’t float above “real life”; it gets dragged through it.
If you like contemporary romance, second-chance romance, workplace romance, slow-burn, and a dash of romantic suspense / gothic-leaning mystery, this is aimed squarely at you, especially if you enjoy heroines who insist on stability and still risk tenderness, and heroes who have to choose integrity over the neat, impressive life-plan. The late-book glow-up (including wedding plans and the found-family warmth) lands like sunlight finally hitting a cold room. If you’ve ever devoured a Nora Roberts romance for its grounded emotion plus a low, steady hum of secrets, Devon’s approach will feel like a close cousin, modern, outdoorsy, and just a little haunted. The One Who Ghosted Me is a story about the cost of silence, and the fierce, stubborn relief of being chosen out loud.
Pages: 488 | ASIN : B0GDSKD3LS
Forgiveness and Love
The Last One to Know follows a man from first love to first heartbreak and a second chance, as faith, divorce, and hard-earned wisdom teach him that love isn’t proven by how tightly you hold on, but by knowing when to let go. Was Ziggy inspired by personal experience, observation, or pure imagination?
Ziggy was largely the result of a combination of personal experience and imagination. His reaction to adultery was based on the observation of a wonderful Christian man who has always been an inspiration to me because of his capacity to show grace and forgiveness.
Ziggy’s voice is plainspoken and detailed, almost diary-like—what drew you to that style?
I often fail to understand what women think and feel, and I have to have it explained to me. Having the main character trapped in that male perspective allowed me to show his confusion and his inability to understand some of the things happening in his life. Most romances are written from a feminine perspective or an omniscient narrator. Ziggy’s struggles to grasp what is happening and why are an important part of his struggle. Female friends explain things to him, and he wrestles with God to find the right path.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Domestic violence, adultery, and divorce were my primary concerns. I wanted to show how these issues can damage and change multiple lives with devastating consequences. On a lesser level, I touched on abortion, racism, and standing for the right without regard to the consequences. These are real-life problems that touch every life to some extent. I tried to address them with compassion and a light touch of humor.
What do you hope Christian readers take away from the way faith is portrayed here?
The importance of forgiveness and love, even when you are hurting, as shown by Siegfried. Lisa’s graciousness in acting contrary to her own self-interest, even when it causes her great pain, is an important part of faith. She is an example to all.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
In The Last One to Know, Siegfried Abel (who hates his name) struggles as he navigates physical attraction, passion, friendship, humor, and all the other aspects that draw two people together.
Siegfried has a strong sense of right and wrong. At times, it seems as though he is tilting at windmills. Will he be successful? Or will those who are more powerful take him down again, and again?
Will he find love, and how will he know it’s the woman of his dreams when he meets her?
Join Siegfried and a host of complex characters as he grows from adolescence to maturity, finding love where he least expected.
In this Clean Christian Romance, you will agonize with Siegfried as he deals with issues of life’s unfairness, disappointments, and betrayal. It is an arduous journey marked by heartache, happiness, and ultimately love.
The Last One to Know: A Wholesome Christian Romance
The Last One to Know follows Siegfried “Ziggy” Abel from college into adulthood as he stumbles through love, faith, and responsibility in small-town Illinois and nearby St. Louis. What starts as a rekindled romance with his high school girlfriend, Dana, slowly unfolds into a marriage filled with deep hurt, mental health struggles, and hard choices that end in divorce. Out of that wreckage, Ziggy grows into a man who has to decide if he will really live by his Christian convictions at work and at home, even when it might cost him his job and his reputation. Alongside that heavy journey runs a gentler thread, the steady presence of Lisa, his friend’s shy kid sister, whose quiet loyalty and courage slowly shift into a second chance at love that feels earned rather than neat. By the time the story reaches its epilogue, the book has walked through abuse, control, depression, and betrayal, and still lands on a hopeful picture of grace, healing, and a new life built on honesty and faith.
I connected with the writing most in the everyday moments. The voice feels casual and relatable. There is a lot of internal chatter in Ziggy’s head, and sometimes he overthinks, yet that fits who he is, a guy who wants to do the right thing and is afraid of messing it up. The small town scenes feel warm and specific, with things like cruising parking lots, White Castle slider bets, and awkward family teasing around the table. I liked that sense of texture. I also appreciated how the spiritual side is woven in. Church, prayer, and conscience sit inside the story like normal life, not like a sermon dropped on top. When Ziggy faces the hospital scandal and the question of calling out a dangerous doctor, his faith is part of the weight and part of the strength, and that moved me.
The book takes its time. There are stretches where conversations and inner doubts are revisited in slightly different ways. That slow burn makes the emotional turns hit harder when they finally arrive, especially the long unraveling of Ziggy and Dana’s marriage and Dana’s fragile recovery after the divorce. The handling of mental illness and suicidal thoughts felt tender and respectful, and that touched me. I liked that Dana is not turned into a villain. She is hurting, she makes painful choices, yet she is also the one who releases Ziggy and blesses his future with Lisa. Her final letter gave me a lump in my throat. Lisa herself worked as a character for me. She starts out as a shy teen who gets teased by her family, and by the end she has become this strong, steady woman who encourages Ziggy to live bravely instead of shrinking back. That arc felt really satisfying.
I came away feeling like I had read about real people through a long, messy decade of life and somehow ended in a place of quiet joy. The writing is straightforward and emotional, with enough humor to keep the darkness from sinking the story. I would recommend The Last One to Know to readers who enjoy clean Christian romance, slow and character-driven plots, and small-town settings with a lot of heart. It will especially resonate with people who have lived through divorce, complicated first loves, or seasons of deep doubt and still want to believe that God can bring something good out of the worst chapters.
Pages: 378 | ASIN : B0G78CWFZ8
Blue Jeans and Lavender Gowns
Blue Jeans and Lavender Gowns follows Terry Deitz from his first sight of Debbie Douglas at a high school pool in 1971 through years of friendship, dating, heartbreak, and slow reconciliation in small-town Illinois and Indiana. The story moves from study hall and football games to farm chores, college, bad marriages, and single parenthood, all filtered through Terry’s first-person voice as a Christian young man trying to grow up. The romance stays clean and sits inside the wider Finding Love in the Heartland series, with a strong focus on faith, family, and the long haul of commitment rather than quick sparks.
I had a soft spot for the writing whenever it stayed close to everyday details. The banter around the study hall table, the running jokes about teachers, and the way everyone teases Debbie about her blue jeans felt warm and authentic. Later, when the lavender gowns start to show up, the title clicks into place, and the contrast between work clothes and dress-up moments gives the romance a neat visual thread. The dialogue carries most of the load and often sounds like real teens or young adults from that time period, with talk about homecoming, 8-tracks, and small diners. At times, the prose can get wordy, especially when Terry circles the same worry, and the pacing in the middle third slows while careers and side relationships are mapped out. Even so, I stayed invested because the author clearly likes these characters and lets them make mistakes without turning them into jokes.
The book is not just a “will they or won’t they” high school romance. It digs into controlling parents, emotional and physical abuse, infidelity, and the stigma around divorce in a churchy small town. I felt angry more than once, especially when Debbie’s early choices box her into a painful marriage, and I felt protective of both her and Terry as they try to navigate guilt and shame that are not always theirs to carry. The Christian themes are upfront, but they mostly show up as characters wrestling with conscience, prayer, and forgiveness rather than long sermons. When Terry talks about the kind of husband and father he wants to be, the story’s view of masculinity becomes clear. It values steadiness, gentleness, and repentance more than swagger. That spoke to me and gave the last few chapters a real emotional weight.
By the end, I felt like I had walked with these people for a big slice of their lives, which is the book’s strength. The long time span gives their eventual peace a satisfying heft. I appreciated the steady, kind tone and the way the story honors ordinary decency as much as big romantic gestures. I would recommend Blue Jeans and Lavender Gowns to readers who enjoy wholesome Christian romance, small-town and 1970s nostalgia, and love stories told from a male point of view. If you want a gentle, faith-colored second-chance romance that takes its time and cares about everyday faithfulness, then you’ll heartily enjoy this story.
Pages: 271 | ASIN : B0FZ2V62J7
The Last One to Know: A Wholecome Christian Romance
The Last One to Know is a wholesome Christian romance that follows Siegfried “Ziggy” Abel from small-town Illinois into college, marriage, heartbreak, and finally a quieter, steadier kind of love. We watch him fall hard for Dana Stewart in high school, navigate her controlling parents and their secret meetings in the woods, marry her, and then slowly realize that love alone cannot fix deep wounds, mental illness, or repeated betrayal. Years later, after a painful divorce that he cannot in good conscience stop, Ziggy finds himself drawn toward Lisa Kohler, the shy girl who used to blush over hot chocolate in his parents’ kitchen, and the story moves toward a second-chance romance that feels gentler and more rooted. The setting is the 1970s and 80s Midwest, and the book wears its label as a clean Christian romance openly, with faith and church life shaping nearly every big decision Ziggy makes.
Ziggy tells everything in first person, in plain language, and there are stretches where we linger in the everyday details of school, work, and family jokes, like the legendary White Castle slider contest or Clint’s quest to get a “four-dollar drunk” after giving blood. Those moments of humor matter because the book also walks into some very dark rooms: Dana’s brutal beatings at the hands of her father, her suicide attempts, the slow disintegration of the marriage, and the shock of Ziggy learning he is “the last one to know” about her infidelity and her determination to leave. The writing can feel unusually detailed at times, almost like a diary that refuses to skip any of the hard or awkward bits, but that density also makes the big emotional turns feel earned. When Ziggy finally sits in a lawyer’s office, reading a divorce agreement that asks for almost nothing and quietly admits multiple affairs, the scene stings because we have trudged through all the little compromises that led there.
I liked how honestly the book handles faith and failure. This is a Christian romance, but it is not a neat sermon with a bow on top. Ziggy believes in God, values marriage, and hates the idea of divorce, yet his pastor and friends gently push him to see that clinging to Dana will likely cost her life and his sanity. The story lets that tension sit for a while, instead of rushing to a tidy answer. I also appreciated the way Lisa is woven in from early on, not as a shiny replacement, but as a girl with her own hurts, stuck in a family that teases her relentlessly and does not always listen. Ziggy’s steady kindness to her years before romance is even on the table makes their later relationship feel like the slow clearing of fog rather than a sudden thunderbolt, and by the time he realizes they have quietly been dating for months, it feels completely natural that he sees her as the person he has been looking for all along.
I feel like the book is less about sparks and more about choosing what is right when everything hurts, learning to forgive without excusing harm, and trusting that God can shepherd someone through both divorce and new love without wasting the pain. If you like character-driven stories, small-town settings, and Christian fiction that is honest about abuse, mental illness, and messy marriages while still staying clean and hopeful, The Last One to Know is worth reading.
Pages: 378 | ASIN : B0G78CWFZ8
