Baffled, Miles makes a face and belts out the next line to the song. Calvin laughs again and shakes his head. For a moment, and not for the first time, Miles is stunned by Calvin—at his rosy cheeks, at how he throws his head back when he laughs, and how he’s smiling wider than Miles has ever seen him. Is his terrible singing doing this? He might just sing even worse.
Miles is a professional artist, a painter, who must return to his hometown of Ridgefield to help out at his family’s inn. The inn is in financial trouble as it must compete with the big chain hotel that just opened. Ever since Miles’s father passed away five years ago, his widowed mother has struggled to manage the inn on her own.
As luck would have it, Calvin, the guitarist for Miles’s favorite band of all time, Cloverlily, is hunkering down in the hotel after rumors of Cloverlily’s impending implosion shocked the fanbase.
Miles is a huge fan and has absolutely no chill when he sees Calvin. Already on edge, Calvin brushes him off and remains cold whenever he and Miles are in the same vicinity.
Eventually, Miles’s perpetually sunny demeanor fades into deep concern and stress about his mother and the inn. He misses his father terribly but cannot show his pain as he doesn’t want to cause his mother any additional stress. Calvin warms to Miles once he realizes that not only is Miles not a crazed fan, he’s actually the artist from whom the band commissioned the artwork for their breakout album.
Together, they save the inn and find a path forward despite Calvin’s fame. Cloverlily is indeed imploding as a result of their lead singer Theo (and Calvin’s ex) threatening to go solo. As soon as Theo catches on that Calvin and Miles are together, he begs the bandmates to reconcile for the sake of the fans.
This was a cute story that defied the standard formula. There were definitely tropes (saving the inn, small town romance, etc..) but the story continued even after the primary problem was mostly resolved. Miles and Calvin had serious things to discuss afterward, such as how a long-distance relationship would work between them, how they could be together despite Calvin’s massive fame, and how Miles really needed to find a way to communicate his needs instead of holding back on account of everyone else’s feelings.
Other than going on for about fifty pages too long, I liked the story and I will probably read book two, which covers the idiots-to-lovers romance between Cloverlily’s bassist and drummer.
