Nicole and Casey are both lawyers on leave from their careers, Casey because he’s disillusioned with the work he’s doing while Nicole needs to clear her name after being accused of violating clients’ privacy, so these two meet under casual circumstances with Nicole staying at a Smoky Mountain cabin that Casey’s (somewhat incompetently) helping to fix up. Even though they initially hold back their career stuff from one another, the author still managed to make it feel as though the pair were genuinely getting to know each other which I always appreciate in a shorter story where you’re expected to buy in to happily ever in a brief time period.

This didn’t delve as deeply into Casey’s issues with his law career as maybe it could have, just a couple conversations here and there, but Nicole’s anxieties over her situation were well conveyed, there’s a strong sense of how heavily it weighs on her, and I liked that while she ultimately does accept help in sorting it all out, she never comes across as helpless.

I enjoyed Casey and Nicole’s relationship, there was a maturity to how they handled most scenes that I liked, they don’t do a lot of stomping out of rooms and leaving things unsaid, they tended to talk, although I have to say, what I most fell in love with here was the dog Buddy and the pair’s evolving attachment to him, whether or not they ended up with the dog mattered more to me than whether they ended up with each other, that’s how invested I was in the furry guy. ( )