The Summer Prize

All books in the Leafwood Falls series can be read as stand-alones.Frankie rolls into Leafwood Falls with a dying RV, a borrowed Saint Bernard she’s careful to tell everyone isn’t hers, and one prize to her name: a summer running the Lamplight, the town’s tired old ice cream parlor. Her plan is the same as it always is. Be fun, be useful, be gone before September can turn into anything.She certainly doesn’t plan on Wes.Wes builds worlds for a living, film sets so real you’d swear you could live in them, right up until the shoot wraps and every last piece is taken down. He’s precise where Frankie is chaos, quiet where she fills a room, and he’d rather watch a good thing from behind glass than let it ask anything of him. He’s come to Leafwood Falls for a reason he won’t say out loud, and he carries a sketchbook he’s never shown a living soul.One shop. One tiny apartment above it. Two people who’ve built entire lives out of leaving first. Except nothing in Leafwood Falls goes to plan.There’s Cecil, the ancient freezer who hums one wrong note and refuses to be replaced. There’s a jukebox that takes no quarters and never once plays what Wes asks it for. There’s Hemingway, the orange bookshop cat next door, who has opinions about the dog. And there’s the town itself, warm and stubborn and far too easy to belong to.Somewhere between the arguments across the counter and the quiet after closing, Frankie starts doing the one thing she’s never let herself do. She starts to want it. The shop. The town. The man who notices everything and says almost nothing. They make each other laugh. They make each other braver than either of them planned on being.Which is when she learns what the summer was really for, and that only one of them gets to keep it.As the season runs out, Frankie has to choose between the exit she’s always kept ready and the terrifying thing she’s never tried: staying, out loud, where everyone can see her do it.A slow-burn, grumpy-sunshine romance about ice cream, spectacularly bad decisions, and what it costs to finally admit out loud that you want something.Return to the beloved town of Leafwood Falls, where a sprinkle of magic, a dash of community, and one opinionated bookshop cat make every story sweeter.