In this story there are new characters (to me anyway) and some that I was already familiar with, and I like that mix. I know something about them and how I would expect them to behave and I know nothing of others and need to find out about them.
Set in the small university town we have a mixture of academics and students, the Cornerstone book shop and staff are in there too. It wasn’t until I started to read it that I realised it was a sequel – and that was an unexpected pleasure. I’m sure it would have told me of I had read the blurb, but I didn’t. I was drawn in simply because I enjoyed the last Kat Jackson book. Didn’t really matter to me what it was about.
I guess you could call this a slow burn romance. You could see the glimmer of it early on – it just took a while to get there – but that is the whole point of a book, so no problem there. It was nicely led into through looking at both main characters, and their interactions with other characters. They had both returned to the home town they had wanted to leave behind them. Emma sort of told us why quite early – it took a little longer for us to learn Aubrey’s story. Aubrey, a little older than Emma, had been back in town for longer, and had a larger backstory – as you would expect. She also had parental death and subsequent poor parenting giving her an additional slice of emotional damage.
There is plenty of baking, some additional studying and of course one of them wants to write. Writing and literature often pops up in sapphic lit for some reason.
Their friendship and emerging relationship appears to give both of them the ability to address areas in their lives that were holding them back, so they can emerge together as a bit better put together.

There is of course an epilogue – just 5 months later from the main story. This shows them steadily moving on with their plans together.