Something Like Family

Lauren Brooks didn't move to Willow Creek looking for love. She was trying to learn how to live again.Nearly two years after losing her husband, Lauren is still figuring out how to be everything her nine-year-old son Toby needs while holding together a life that no longer resembles the one she planned. A new house, a new job, and a new school are supposed to give them the fresh start they desperately need.Instead, her first week begins with lost shoes, late mornings, a nervous child-and a cup of caramel coffee spilled down her sleeve by the most irritating man she has met in years.Jack Turner isn't exactly looking for romance either.Between running his auto shop, coaching youth soccer, and raising his daughter Callie on his own, Jack's life already contains more chaos than he can comfortably manage. His first encounter with Lauren ends in disaster, their second isn't much better, and the fact that Toby and Callie attend the same school guarantees they won't be able to simply avoid each other.Unfortunately for Lauren, Jack Turner keeps showing up.At school meetings.At soccer practice.When her car breaks down.When the kids need help.And eventually, in the quiet spaces of her life she has worked hardest to keep closed.As Toby and Callie form a friendship of their own, Lauren and Jack are pulled into each other's worlds through PTA meetings, practices, school events, family dinners, broken cars, difficult conversations, and the ordinary chaos of single parenthood.Slowly, irritation becomes understanding.Understanding becomes friendship.And friendship begins turning into something neither of them expected.But moving forward isn't simple when the past still has a place at the table.Lauren loves the husband she lost, and opening her heart again feels dangerously close to leaving him behind. Jack has learned how to build a life around his daughter without asking anyone else to stay. Both know what it means to protect their children-and both know how much there is to lose when someone becomes important.Then one terrifying moment forces Lauren to confront the truth she has been avoiding.Jack isn't simply someone who wandered into their lives.He has become part of them.Something Like Family is a heartfelt contemporary romance about grief, second chances, single parenthood, friendship, healing, and the unexpected ways a family can grow around the people brave enough to let love back in.Warm, funny, emotional, and grounded in the beautiful mess of everyday parenting, it is a story about a widow discovering that moving forward doesn't mean forgetting, a single father realizing there may still be room in his life for someone else, and two children who understand before the adults do that family isn't always something you're born into.Sometimes it's something you build.One spilled coffee, one soccer practice, one shared dinner, and one brave step at a time.