If you love small town romances, this book is for you! Sweetwater, Kentucky has fallen on hard times, but its stalwart residents are fighting to keep it alive. Taylor Mulvaney runs the Sweetheart Bake Shop on Main Street, making only heart-shaped baked goods. Her best friend, Caroline Loder, owns Sweet Caroline’s Deli across the street. And you can still get a milkshake or a cone at the Little Dipper down the road or take in the river view from the historic Sweetwater Inn. But it’s when Luke Montgomery comes home to his family’s horse farm for this father’s funeral that things really begin to change for the little riverside town. Whether those changes are good or bad hinges on Luke himself. When he finds himself unwittingly holding the fate of his beloved hometown in his hands, he has some monumental decisions to make.
Taylor Mulvaney isn’t your typical romance heroine. Her freckles, red hair, glasses, and corkscrew curls always made her feel like the odd girl out, but over the course of her life she’s learned to embrace that. And knowing how hard it can be to fit in is what makes her adopt the blind, scruffy little pooch that shows up on Main Street one day. You’re likely to find Taylor with flour in her hair or a dab of icing on the tip of her nose. But she’s determined to keep the Sweetheart Bake Shop in business no matter what – once upon a time, she was the much-tormented new girl in Sweetwater, but now this town is her home and she’s not going to let it die.
I’ve loved playing with structure and time in this book. As a result, we experience not only one Valentine’s Day with Taylor and Luke, but five of them! From the day Luke defends her honor against a bully in the fourth grade up to the present day, we’re there for all of it, learning exactly who they started out as and getting to the know the people they’ve become.
The valentine box itself was an incredibly fun part of the story for me. Starting out as a gift from Taylor’s father to collect valentines in at her new school, the hand-crafted heart-shaped box stays with Taylor throughout her life as a special keepsake she’s always finding new uses for. And it has a magical way of somehow always bringing Taylor and her girlhood crush, Luke, back together.
I know many people have a love/hate relationship with Valentine’s Day, but no matter where you fall on that spectrum, you’ll still love THE VALENTINE BOX. This story isn’t so much about the traditional romantic gestures we often associate with the holiday, but about the journeys both Taylor and Luke take to find their way to each other, including missteps along the way. The fact that many of these pivotal moments just happen to occur on Valentine’s Day, and just happen to involve that heart-shaped box … well, that part’s just kismet.
Box Books #3
It started with a box for collecting heart wishes…
Among the constants in Taylor Mulvaney’s life are the heart-shaped box made by her father, the mysterious hearts she sometimes sees, and her longtime crush on Luke Montgomery. The valentine box has a way of connecting her and Luke time and again – and even after Luke breaks her heart before leaving their hometown of Sweetwater, Kentucky for good, she never gets completely over him.
The box brings them back together when they least expect it.
Fifteen years later, Taylor still sees hearts. And now she even makes them, baking heart-shaped treats at the Sweetheart Bake Shop. After a rough start in life, she’s found her way. Until, that is, Luke comes home for his father’s funeral, bringing a deluge of old feelings flooding back. Before she knows it, a note dropped in her still-beloved valentine box has Taylor swept up in helping him save his family’s horse farm – and trying not to fall back in love with the guy who once left her shattered.
How will it end?
Could Luke really want Taylor the way she’s always wanted him? Can she trust in the future to turn out better than the past? The valentine box is still working its magic to draw them together all these years later, but can Taylor set her fears aside long enough to believe in a second chance at love?
Romance Small Town | Women's Fiction Contemporary [Oliver-Heber Books, On Sale: January 28, 2025, e-Book , / ]
Toni Blake's love of writing began when she won an essay contest in the fifth grade. Soon after, she penned her first novel, nineteen notebook-pages long, and announced to her mother over breakfast one day that she was going to be a writer when she grew up. Since then, Toni has become the author of more than a dozen contemporary romance novels. Her work has been excerpted in Cosmo, she's been a recipient of the Kentucky Women Writers Fellowship and a nominee for the prestigious Pushcart Prize, and she's also had more than forty short stories and articles published. Toni lives in the Midwest and enjoys traveling, genealogy, crafts, and snow skiing.
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