Feels Like Falling by Kristy Woodson Harvey - Read in .... January 2021 ❤❤❤❤

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Goodreads says: =

It's summertime on the North Carolina coast and the livin' is easy. Unless, that is, you've just lost your mother to cancer, your sister to her extremist husband, and your husband to his executive assistant. Meet Gray Howard. Right when Gray could use a serious infusion of good karma in her life, she inadvertently gets a stranger, Diana Harrington, fired from her job at the local pharmacy. Diana Harrington's summer isn't off to the greatest start either: Hours before losing her job, she broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of their shared house with only a worn-out Impala for a bed. Lucky for her, Gray has an empty guest house and a very guilty conscience. With Gray's kindness, Diana's tide begins to turn. But when her first love returns, every secret from her past seems to resurface all at once. And, as Gray begins to blaze a new trail, she discovers, with Diana's help, that what she envisioned as her perfect life may not be what she wants at all

*The Bookish Libra* says=

Grey Howard is going through a messy and seemingly never ending divorce where her ex-husband, even though he cheated on her, is still trying to take half of the company she has built from the ground up as part of the divorce settlement.  Gray refuses to cave so they’re basically at a stand-off, with their 8-year-old son, Wagner, caught in the middle.  Our second protagonist, Diana Harrington, is also going through a messy breakup and, because her deadbeat of an ex gambled away all her money, is also currently living in her car.  When the two women cross paths and Gray accidentally gets Diana fired from her job, they have no idea that their lives are about to become intertwined in ways they never could have anticipated from that first meeting.

Both Diana and Gray are smart and resourceful women who are going through a rough patch and who are used to being completely independent.  What they start to learn the better they get to know each other, however, is that it’s okay to lean on others sometimes. You don’t always have to go it alone.  The friendship and the sense of sisterhood that grew between Diana and Gray throughout the book kept a smile on my face the entire time I was reading.

I also adored the secondary characters that made up the rest of Gray’s found family.  Her best friend Marcy and her gem of an assistant, Trey, really rounded out Gray’s support system and I loved that they pulled Diana in with warm and welcoming arms as well.  The banter between this foursome had me chuckling to myself every time they appeared on the page together.

There are also some weightier topics in Feels Like Falling.  There are some real family issues with sisters who have gone off the rails, mother-daughter issues, plus those dramatic breakups I already touched on. Harvey gives a very realistic portrait of just how messy and complicated life can be sometimes, which makes that support group of Gray’s (and now Diana’s as well) all the more important.

For those who love a bit of romance, Feels Like Falling has that too. There’s a fun summer fling that’s maybe more than a fling, and there’s also my favorite romance trope, a second chance romance.  Both romances are very well written and felt completely authentic, and yes, I was rooting for them