May 15, 2023
Porter’s adorable third Modern Love romance (after Flirting with the Beast) opens on 49-year-old actor Margot Hughes abandoning her theatrical dreams, trading the bright lights and precarity of Broadway for a stable office job in her picturesque hometown on California’s Central Coast. She believes she’s given all she can to the theater, and now she wants to rest. But when her boss and friend Sally Collins, the champion of (and money behind) the local community theater, has a health scare, Margot must step in to save the upcoming production. Luckily, she has some help. Life has been in hyperdrive for 45-year-old television star Max Russo, and he owes all his success to Sally, his surrogate mother. If repaying her means starring in a dinky community production of Barefoot in the Park, so be it. As Margot and Max rediscover their passion for stagecraft, they also find unexpected love after lifetimes of heartbreak. Porter conjures all the charm and chaos of mounting a theater production and makes Margot and Max easy to root for as they navigate the bumpy road to happily ever after. Readers are sure to be charmed. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary.
June 1, 2023
With her 50th birthday looming, former stage actress Margot Hughes feels content, mostly, with where she is in life. While she still doesn't have a child, at least she has traded the hustle and bustle of NYC, and ultimately her ex, for a less stressful existence in small-town California. When Margot's boss and dear friend Sally has a health scare, Max Russo re-enters her life. For a brief moment in time, Sally dated Max's deadbeat father and although it didn't work out, she became the closest thing to a mother that Max ever had. Now a successful actor in his forties, Max teams up with Margot to direct and star in Sally's historic theater summer production while she recovers. Things heat up both on and off stage, but as the end of the summer draws near, Margot isn't sure she can sacrifice her chance of becoming a mother, even for Max, who doesn't want kids. She will have to decide what's most important to her. VERDICT Prolific Porter's (Flirting With the Beast) newest delivers on heat and heart.--Kara Kohn
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