Dolly All the Time
Dolly All the Time ~ Annabelle Monaghan
Dolly is the single mom to a 13 year old boy, Gus. She teaches kindergarten in Boston, but is spending the summer at her father’s Rhode Island home, repairing damage from a small fire. Struggling to make ends meet, she supplements her income by driving for Uber and working in customer support for a tiny company that specializes in weighted vests. She also helps out with her father’s seafood business. Years earlier, her mother persuaded him to expand the company, then abandoned the family when the venture failed, leaving him deeply in debt. Now the house needs a new roof to avoid being condemned, and Dolly has no idea how they will afford the $50,000 cost.
While delivering shrimp by bicycle to the ultra-rich Whitfield family, Dolly comes across Stewart, the presumed heir, stranded with a flat tire and a dead phone. He’s having a horrible day – his fiancée has left him for a famous baseball player, and due to the family’s prominence, a photo of her kissing the baseball player has landed on Page Six of the New York Post. Dolly is a can do type, and helps him to change his tire, while teasing him about not being able to do anything for himself. The next day he comes to the seafood shop to proposition her – will she pose as his girlfriend for the rest of the summer, in order to convince the family (and the board of directors) that he is dependable enough to become CEO when his father retires?
We all know where this is going. We saw Pretty Woman. It’s the getting there that matters, and I’ll admit that I enjoyed the ride. I enjoyed the relationships between Dolly and her family members. I liked the growth that both she and Stewart went through in healing some of their more fraught familial relationships. I liked their relationship with each other, and the sweet way they fell in love. I liked that the issue that almost breaks them up (I mean, we knew that was coming, right?) isn’t just both of them not talking to each other, though there is a little bit of that. Overall a good read. Recommended.
7 Comments
Elisabeth
This is on my TBR (I still have at least a month wait, I think)!!
I’ve heard such good things! I REALLY liked Norah Goes Off Script and I’m excited for this book, though admittedly romance is not really my genre.
J
I always say that Romance is not really my genre, but then I read a good one and yeah, I’m sucked in. Maybe it’s kinda my genre, lol.
Lisa's Yarns
I ADORED this book, but I am a big fan of the author’s works. I’ve read all of them except one that has an infidelity plot line (something I don’t care for, especially in a romance!). This was just so delightful and I loved the setting!
J
I’m glad you enjoyed it so much! I enjoyed the setting as well. This is the first of her work that I’ve read.
NGS
Everything Elisabeth said! Nora Goes Off Script is one of my favorite romance novels of the 2020s. I can hardly wait to read this one!
J
Well, you and Elisabeth have convinced me. I just put Nora Goes Off Script on hold. It’s 4 years old, and has a 10 week wait, which is saying something I guess. By the time I get it I will have no idea who suggested it to me, so don’t be surprised if you get zero credit if/when I write it up.
Nicole MacPherson
I’m in the holds queue for this one, I do like this author.