Permission to Want: A Spain, Maine Novel

Tess Navarro used to know exactly what she wanted. A kitchen. A reputation. A life built around taste, precision, ambition, and control. Then came the public collapse. Now Tess has arrived in Spain, Maine with one rule: she is not really cooking right now. But the Mad Moose Café, KC Quinn's bookstore suppers, and one quietly devastating specialty grower named Rowan Bell have other ideas. Rowan has already walked away from a food world that turned appetite into judgment. She grows herbs, supplies the town, and trusts honest things: soil, weather, timing, and food that tastes like itself. As Tess slowly rediscovers the difference between feeding people and performing for them, Rowan offers something Tess does not know how to accept: steadiness, pleasure, and the radical possibility of wanting without apology. But when Tess is offered a polished return to the life that burned her out, she must decide whether success still means being seen by everyone-or being known by the one person who makes her feel safe enough to want more. Permission to Want is a tender, slow-burn sapphic romance about burnout, appetite, chosen community, and learning that wanting a softer life is not the same as giving up.