The Fall Back Plan by Melanie Jacobson

This was the refreshing kind of love story/chicklit that I used to once read and am finding it increasingly hard to find given the randomness of my choices. Lucas is the local law enforcement. He went from being the town’s local bad boy to the one making sure the rules were kept. There is the fact that the crime levels in town are low. The new local bar, which exclusively used outside people to set up, has made people wary since they did not use local suppliers. The owner was also kept under wraps for a while. When the reveal occurs, we find out that our female protagonist has an axe to grind and rightly so. She had a traumatic childhood and having a drunk parent and now her running the bar may seem a little odd, but she has her reasons. Jolie is a very resolute character. She thinks she knows how to set her mind at ease and take some form of revenge on her past, but meeting the new version of Lucas and realising that, like her, everyone has had a chance to grow and change over the years – only some have taken that chance while several others have not. The relationship builds slowly and with understanding since they both have something to prove to themselves before ‘going steady’. I highly recommend this book to fans of small-town romances. I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.