Daily walks along the sparkling shoreline and chats with her best friend are part of bookstore owner Lucy Sullivan‘s slow-paced life. And that’s just how she likes to spend her time in the close-knit community of her picturesque village.

Lucy also adores maintaining the town’s Little Free Library. Those who leave a book there include notes to the next reader. And Lucy, herself, has gotten a few that have her smitten. Life couldn’t be better in her quaint beach village with the sway of sea grass in the soft coastal breeze.

So when she hears Logan Lancaster is brought in to solve the town’s budget deficit, Lucy isn’t at all excited about his vision for growth along the waterfront. To make matters worse, it’s Lucy who’s appointed to oppose Logan in a series of public forums for the planned expansion. The quaint life she’s built for herself will never be the same.

They couldn’t be more opposite. Except for one tiny unbeknownst to both of them, they’ve been swapping anonymous notes in the Little Free Library…

A debut novel by Savannah Carlisle from Harpeth Road Press

Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways.

Three years later, Anna is a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck while West is a Stanford professor. He may be one of four heirs to the Weston Foods conglomerate, but he has little interest in working for the heartless corporation his family built from the ground up. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch.

Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years. Just when Liam thinks he’s in the home stretch, pressure mounts from his family to see this mysterious spouse, and he has no choice but to turn to the one person he’s afraid to introduce to his one-percenter parents—his unpolished, not-so-ex-wife.

But in the presence of his family, Liam’s fears quickly shift from whether the feisty, foul-mouthed, paint-splattered Anna can play the part to whether the toxic world of wealth will corrupt someone as pure of heart as his surprisingly grounded and loyal wife. Liam will have to ask himself if the price tag on his flimsy cover story is worth losing true love that sprouted from a lie.

[My favorite Christina Lauren book remains The Unhoneymooners]