In LoveLife, by Rachel Spangler, working-class Joey has an overwhelming crush on the professional-looking woman who regularly visits the coffee shop where she works. Through her best friend’s machinations, Joey discovers that the woman is a life coach named Elaine, which only deepens her feelings of inadequacy. As a college dropout who has spent the last several years supporting her bereaved father, Joey has trouble believing that she deserves love from anyone, let alone someone like Elaine. For her part, Elaine has just moved back to Buffalo to reconnect with her family, but finds herself falling into old patterns instead. When Joey’s meddling best friend Lisa sets her up for a consultation with Elaine, she finds herself opening up to the life coach about her lack of confidence . . . and her desire for a seemingly perfect woman. As Joey realizes that she could actually benefit from coaching to get her life back on track, she also understand that she’s put Elaine in the awkward position–once she reveals that her dream woman and the life coach are one and the same–of continuing a professional relationship begun under false pretenses.

Joey and Elaine are both very relatable, and Spangler does a good job of carefully nurturing the spark of their attraction as they struggle to keep their client-advisor relationship professional. She throws in Buffalo-specific details for spice, but characters beyond the two women (and Joey’s lifelong friend Lisa) are a bit more roughly sketched. It’s clear from the book that she did her homework when researching life coaching, and the novel fairly glows with its characters’ earnest approach to self-improvement. After an almost agonizingly extended will they/won’t they, Spangler ties up the threads in a satisfactory way.