cover image The Sweetheart List

The Sweetheart List

Jill Shalvis. Avon, $18.99 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-323569-4

Bestseller Shalvis’s adorable fourth Sunrise Cove romance (after The Backup Plan) matches a surly bartender with a skeptical baker. After a bad breakup, Harper Shaw relocates to Lake Tahoe with her dog and her mother’s recipes in tow. She’s excited to open a bakery and make a fresh start—and it’s just icing on the cake that the building she rents for her business is right next to the bar owned by her hot landlord, Bodie Campbell. Sexy and surly Bodie is not looking for a relationship, so his repeated run-ins with his gorgeous and too-nice neighbor grate. Things get more complicated when Harper takes in teenage runaway Ivy, to whom she provides a roof and baking lessons unaware that Ivy has ulterior motives for visiting town that have everything to do with Bodie. The trio slowly become a makeshift family, with both Harper and Ivy fully embraced by Bodie’s rambunctious, close-knit clan—but what will happen when Ivy’s secrets come to light? This charming tale is just as welcoming as the cozy small-town community within which it’s set, and Shalvis hits the perfect blend of sweet and spicy. Readers will be thrilled. Agent: Annelise Robey, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (June)