The first in a homey, feel-good series, McNear's small-town tale offers lakeside views and likable characters. Since her husband's death in Afghanistan, Allie can no longer bear the intrusiveness of suburbia: the pitiful stares at the grocery, the useless advice, the weight of all those happy memories. So she sells the house, puts her furniture in storage, and moves herself and 5-year-old Wyatt to her family's cabin on Minnesota's Butternut Lake. Though slightly derelict, the cabin will be their new home, a new start. There, she reconnects with childhood friend Jax (pregnant with girl No. 4) and Caroline, owner of the local diner. Things seem pleasingly unchanged in Butternut, except for the large lake house that has recently appeared across from Allie's more modest cabin. The modernist affair belongs to the town's most eligible bachelor, Walker Ford, owner of a string of successful boatyards. It seems inevitable that Allie and Walker will make their ways to each other, but there is a novel's worth of obstacles in their path: Allie's fear of betraying the memory of her husband, Walker's fear of commitment, and their mutual, initial dislike for each other. While their romance works itself out, there is other trouble in Butternut: Jax's old boyfriend (and secretly the father of her first child) is out of prison and is blackmailing her to keep quiet. Caroline, bereft that her only child has just moved away to college, brushes off the advances of a friendly retired pilot. And then, despite a passionate weekend together, Allie misinterprets a visit from Walker's ex-wife and calls off the blossoming romance. Jax's husband finds out about the blackmail, and the two separate. Caroline eases her loneliness by babysitting Wyatt. Will the three women remain alone by novel's end? Unlikely. Plot really isn't the point of books like these; it's about the characters, and McNear has admirably crafted people worth following.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

When widow Allie Beckett returns to her long-shuttered family cabin in Butternut Lake, Minnesota, with her five-year-old son, she reconnects with old friends and makes new ones as she still struggles to face and understand her wrenching loss. After Allie's husband was killed in Afghanistan, Allie did her best to hold things together for her and her son, until she decided life would be easier if she retreated to the lake where she spent the best summers of her life. Her old friend Jax, now married with her own children and her own sadnesses, becomes a bedrock of support as Allie fumbles her way back into the small lakeside community, gripped by the shyness of being a stranger again. But it's her neighbor, enigmatic Walker Ford, who eventually lights her fire and makes her believe there might be love again in her future. All the characters learn and grow as their lives intertwine. Hampered slightly here and there by an overreliance on exposition, this nevertheless charming debut should attract fans of Susan Wiggs and Luanne Rice.--Trevelyan, Julie Copyright 2014 Booklist