Summer Reading

February 20, 2023
McKinlay’s charming latest (after It Happened One Christmas Eve) opens with a meet-cute no reader will forget and blooms into a multifaceted story replete with lovable characters, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and a vicarious vacation to Martha’s Vineyard. After up-and-coming Boston chef Samantha Gale is passed over for promotion by a boss who seems more concerned about her gender and her dyslexia than her qualifications, she quits her restaurant job and heads to her family’s summer home to spend a month licking her wounds while chaperoning her teenage half-brother. She’s not looking for romance, but when she meets Ben Reynolds, she can’t ignore their attraction. But Ben is the town’s new library director and books are his life, while Sam’s severe dyslexia has left her with a lifelong hatred of reading. She’s initially worried that this difference will make them incompatible, but Ben’s enthusiasm proves infectious, and he soon encourages her to write a cookbook of her own. McKinlay handles Sam’s dyslexia with sensitivity and heart, and all editions of the book will be published in “a dyslexic friendly font.” The well-developed emotional growth between the protagonists makes their connection feel real. This is a keeper. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency.

Starred review from April 1, 2023
As meet-cutes go, Sam Gale admits her first encounter with Ben Reynolds, aka "hot reading guy," is definitely not one for the books, even if it does involve a book, specifically the one Sam accidentally knocks out of Ben's hands and into the ocean. However, several days later, after dropping her half-brother, Tyler, off at robotics camp at the local library on Martha's Vineyard, Sam gets another chance with Ben when she discovers he is the interim library director. But can someone who struggles to read and so hates books really have a shot at romance with a books-are-my-jam kind of man? Readers will find much to adore in McKinlay's (Wait for It, 2021) latest fetching mix of romance and women's fiction, beginning with the empathic and insightful ways in which she integrates the challenges someone with dyslexia faces into the engaging story line of this comic charmer. Add to this McKinlay's flair for capturing just how family and friends can make us feel both vulnerable and strong, conveyed in breezy writing buoyed by quippy banter and sizzling sexual chemistry, and you have a book that is pure reading bliss in any season.

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