Strawberry Wine

Small-town teen love gets a second chance in Jamison’s promising debut. Addison Monroe fell hard for college student Jake Grady the summer before her senior year of high school. Jake works on her family’s farm in backcountry Georgia and speedily becomes Addison’s savior when a classmate makes unwanted sexual advances. The first half of the novel follows their affair through its rapid turns with all the headiness of first love, summer pleasures, and heartbreak. The second half picks up 10 years later with Addison’s seemingly perfect life in Atlanta, where she has a successful career and charming fiancé, Christopher. Her return home to announce her engagement is quickly complicated by an unexpected death and her reunion with Jake. Jamison flounders a bit by making Addison’s suitors one-dimensional—Jake is goodness personified, and Christopher is such a villain that one expects him to twirl his mustache—and giving Jake’s past some unnecessary unpleasantness. Her solid female characters, including Addison’s grandmother and best friend, provide a good counterbalance. Jamison will gratify readers looking for rural charm, second chances, and tender cowboys. (Feb.)