The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)

by Laurie Gilmore

Hazel was literally surrounded by amazing stories, books filled with love and adventure and life, but Hazel herself was stuck. ‘And in two months, I’ll be thirty,’ she muttered to no one in particular since the shop was empty.

She’d forgotten to have wild and storied days. Her twenties had been ... calm? Responsible? Boring. Hazel had essentially been in her thirties since she was fifteen.

And it had never bothered Hazel before. She liked her bookstore. She liked cups of chamomile tea and rainy days and the Sunday morning crossword puzzle. She liked her quiet life. Except now, all of a sudden, with thirty sticking its proverbial tongue out at her, Hazel suddenly wondered if she’d missed out on something. Maybe she’d forgotten to try some things. Maybe, shockingly, there was more life outside of her books that she should have experienced by now.

‘Come with me, lass, if you want an adventure.’

She couldn’t go back and change the past and she didn’t want to, not really. But in the months leading up to her birthday, she wanted to step outside herself. To let go. To be young and fun and twenty-something before it was too late.

She was thirty years old and she knew who she was. Hazel Kelly, bookstore manager, tea drinker, book reader, blanket snuggler, indoor cat. And she was also fun and flirty and sexy if she wanted to be.

‘You’re all I think about. All I want. Me and you until the end.’

He realized he loved her and that he probably had all along. But it had snuck up on him somehow even though she’d been perfect from the start.