Nicola is back in her home town of Redgum Valley for three months while she house swaps with her sister. She also is watching over her eccentric parents who have always been a bit high maintenance so her sister needs a break from them as well. Nicola is between jobs so she agrees. She’s not got fond memories of her home town but she’s going to muddle through. Her friend Lainey gets her a temp position at her place of business that allows her the freedom to look after her parents as well.

Nicola is not happy when she runs into Blair Morrissey. Nicola was a bit of a nerd in school and Blair and the other kids made fun of her. Nicola had a huge crush on Blair until her love poetry was found by another student and shown to Blair. Now Nicola is determined to stay away from the man, even though he’s filled out quite nicely in the years since she’s seen him last.

Nicola and Blair keep running into each other and when Nicola needs help and no one else is available she calls Blair. They become something like friends and Blair keeps asking her out for a drink but Nicola keeps turning him down. When it gets closer to the time when Nicola is due to go back to her life in Sydney she realizes that she certainly doesn’t hate Blair like she thought – in fact she’s pretty sure her feelings run much deeper and much more positively than that. But has Blair had enough rejection and moved on?

This was a great little novella. It was a wonderful length for the story and gave us good insight into the characters without drawing things out. We saw Blair and Nicola’s friendship blossoming despite Nicola’s attempts to stop it. Nicola eventually sees into her own heart and her past and realizes that neither she nor Blair or the same people as they were back in school and that she needed to let things go. In doing that she could open herself up to something beautiful between the two of them and I loved seeing her grow.

The story also has lovely secondary characters in Blair’s dog, Dammit, Nicola’s parents who are a crack up and her best friend Lainey. The entire cast of characters made this book a quick and fun read that had me smiling most of the way through it.

Rating: 4 out of 5

This looks like a great book, I would have loved to review it but it didn't download on my kindle.