Home is the place to heal, right? At least, that's what Dillon Michaels is hoping as she leaves her disappointing career and nonstarter love life behind to help her grieving and aging grandfather on his small Oregon farm. The only problem? Her eccentric mother beat her there and has taken over Dillon's old room. After a few nights sleeping on a sagging sofa, Dillon is ready to give up, until she receives an unlikely gift--her grandfather's run-down vintage camp trailer, which she quickly resolves to restore with the help of Jordan Atwood, the handsome owner of the local hardware store.
But just when things are finally beginning to run smoothly, Dillon's noncommittal ex-boyfriend shows up with roses . . . and a ring.
★★☆☆☆
After her career and love life both go south in less than 24 hours, Dillon Michaels decides to move to Oregon to help her widower grandfather run his farm. Upon arrival, Dillon unexpectedly finds that her mother, also having recently suffered a hit to her love life (albeit of her own doing), had the same idea to come crash at the farm. Dillon and her mother don't have the closest bond, evident in the way Dillon refers to her by her name, Margot. Dillon also tends to bristle at health nut Margot's micro-managing personality and her tendency to delegate all her work. Margot's also called dibs on Dillon's old room, leaving Dillon to camp on the living room couch. It doesn't take long for the whole place to feel extra small.
A small but mighty blessing comes in the form of Dillon's grandfather offering her an old teardrop-shaped camper trailer left to him by a friend who had passed away awhile back. Having sat out by the barn for some time, the trailer's condition initially looks questionable but Dillon can't get over the excitement of potentially having her own space again. She happily dives into the restoration process, not even concerned with having virtually no experience in this type of work.
Further blessings come from a new friendship with Jordan Atwood, owner of the town's hardware store and one of the area's most hard to snag bachelors. Not only is he knowledgeable in the tools and parts she needs for her trailer restoration, but he also offers his services in free labor (installation, mechanical repair, etc). Working this much in close proximity, their friendship grows. Before long, it's developing into a undeniable flirtation between the two. But just as it seems like sparks might really kick off, Dillon's ex shows up with a ring and a proposition... but is he too little too late?
I've read and enjoyed Melody Carlson's work in the past, but this one just didn't quite do it for me. While there are cute elements to the story as a whole, much of the writing felt pretty flat to me. Most of the characters are only lukewarm entertaining (though I did quite like the grandfather character). As I mentioned before, Margot and Dillon's interactions have virtually no feeling of mother-daughter bond, but it's not all that well explained as to why the emotional wall is there. Dillon and Jordan are cute as friends, and yes there's some mild flirting here and there, but this is another one of those stories where the reader is just expected to buy that deep love came out of nowhere at the end without the author bothering to really develop that.
Add up the low-key sniping between Dillon & Margot and all the scenes of Dillon either cleaning her trailer or shopping for it, and you pretty much have the bulk of the book.
To be blunt, the writing felt lazy. It read like a bland, phoned-in little something Carlson threw together to cash in on cutesy little travel trailers being trendy right now. But as I mentioned, there are some sweet elements here and there --- think country life with a side of Instagram. With some reworking with the ideas here, I could see this story idea having potential for being adapted into something like a fluffy Hallmark Movie romance special.
To close, let me just say that as someone who has lived with both OCD and dyslexia since my teens, I was disappointed to see a scene in this novel where dyslexia was quickly trivialized. Dillon describes her inability to back up a trailer as "as a dyslexic thing or something" and Jordan later replies with a "yep, I totally get the dyslexia thing." Okay, except THIS ISN'T DYSLEXIA. Dillon isn't written as a character with dyslexia anywhere else in the book. The subject is never mentioned again except for this one scene, so it read like those who like to claim OCD because they organized their pens or prefer their homes extra tidy. I'm typically not one to get all riled up about every little thing in books -- I understand it's fiction --- but this just stung a little to read, as it touched upon something I have spent years learning to work around, have cried over, have exhausted myself to overcome... and casually made it a quick ha-ha moment for a character who probably just couldn't tell her left from her right.
FTC DISCLAIMER: Revell Publishing kindly provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions above are entirely my own.
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