Amy Carol Reeves in coversation with Rowenna Miller

Dr. Lizzie Wells, a professor of British Literature and bestselling author, is grieving her husband the Victorian way. She keeps a lock of his hair in a choker around her neck and dons widows weeds–and notifies her colleagues and students that she will accept only paper letters instead of email.

But then she’s offered a trip to London for escape and healing, where she befriends fellow bestselling novelist AD Hemmings. Rakish and handsome, Hemmings pushes her out of her comfort zone. She attends a Victorian-style séance, gets pulled onstage at a burlesque bar, and sight-sees with her young son.

All the while, back in South Carolina, her late husband’s best friend and lawyer, Henry, peels back the layers of a family secret her mother-in-law is desperate to keep hidden. Cross-Atlantic ‘family business’ updates turn into regular FaceTime hangouts and their friendship evolves into something more. Lizzie fears she’s falling in love with him…

Struggling with conflicting feelings, Lizzie travels to Brontë country where in the windswept moors she comes to peace with grief, joy, and all the in-betweens.

Think: If Emily Henry wrote about a young widow in the vein of Really Good, Actually (irreverent, hot-mess heroine) and Lessons in Chemistry (female academic thrust into a commercial space; struggling as a single mom) with a warm-blanket romantic HEA, and loads of snark.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher The Whispering Shelf