Paige Hildabrint knows how to save a failing business. She has spent eleven years cutting losses, closing deals, and doing whatever it takes to keep the numbers clean. But when she inherits her aunt’s crumbling seaside bookstore, she finds herself trapped by a bizarre six-month clause and a town that does not care about corporate logic.

The store is full of romance novels, pimento cheese, stubborn grandmothers, one furious Persian cat, and Ben Finch—the grumpy handyman who seems determined to challenge every decision she makes. Paige plans to modernize, optimize, and liquidate her way out. Ben plans to keep the store exactly as it is.

Then the mayor comes for the property, and Paige must choose between the life she built in Chicago and the messy, improbable community that has started to feel like home. But in Magnolia Bay, saving the bookstore may mean risking the one thing she never intended to lose: her heart.