One chance to save her hotel. One chance to save his career. One last chance at each other.

Daisy Johnson is hell-bent on keeping her late mother’s hotel in the California desert alive, despite costly renovations and vacation rentals sucking business dry. She can handle everything on her own just fine, thank you, but she falters when her childhood best friend returns home. He’s the boy she encouraged to chase his dreams eight years ago, even though those dreams took him away from her.

After a scandal crushes Max Weber’s art curator career, he has no choice but to return to Harlow, California, and plan his comeback. Once eager to escape his hometown and disapproving parents, he always found refuge in Daisy—so he’s surprised to find her so guarded now. Even with oceans and years apart, he could never forget her. Surely, their back-and-forth voicemails were proof of that…

Max and Daisy team up to salvage her hotel and his career, and while the project only goes until the end of the summer—he’ll leave, and she’ll stay—they can’t get each other out of their systems. As they reignite a spark they’ve both long ignored, the two must face what broke them apart and what’s still holding them together.

***

In a Desert Daze is a spicy childhood friends to lovers romance set in a small desert town, perfect for fans of the estranged friends to lovers in It's Different This Time by Joss Richard, the hopelessly devoted male main character in Savor It by Tarah Dewitt, and the heart and heat of Jessica Joyce books.

Note: this is book #2 in the Small-Town Escapes series of standalone romances. You can read and enjoy this book without having read book #1.

Tropes

• estranged childhood friends to lovers
• small town in the desert
• he falls first, he falls harder
• "let's do it once to get it out of our system"
• open-door spice

Content Warnings

In a Desert Daze is a spicy contemporary romance intended for an 18+ audience. The book also tackles some emotional topics before ending in a Happy Ever After. Listed below is the content that may be triggering for some readers. Some of this content may be minor spoilers for what’s ahead, so proceed at your own discretion.

Mentioned but not shown on page: death of a parent, alcohol consumption by a minor, use of psychedelics by a minor, pregnancy (this is not a surprise pregnancy book; pregnancy is merely mentioned)

Shown on page: marijuana use