Georgie, blank and uncertain of where her life is going now that her job has come to an end, moves back to her hometown and bumps into Levi, the stern and closed off carpenter, in the local grocers before heading back to her parents house and realising that they're going to be spending a lot more time together. Oh, AND this book has one of the funniest MEET-DISASTERS I’ve read in a contemporary romance in a long time! Georgie, All Along has the bones of a highly-recognizable setup: Georgie Mulcahy has just lost her demanding, high-powered job as a personal assistant to a Hollywood star, and responds by stuffing her (very few) belongings into trash bags, throwing them in the back of her car, and driving home to the small Virginia town she grew up in. And who better to help her than the grumpy older brother of the very same high school crush whose name is all over this friend fic in puffy sparkle pen?

To pick a point in your life where things went down one path, and imagine what it would be like if you took another. Both Georgie and Levi are special and extremely likable characters who seem lost and exhausted, unsure of how to move forward with their lives. Honest and deeply emotional, Georgie, All Along is a smart, tender must-read for everyone who’s ever wondered about the life that got away . As Levi helps Georgie with this wishlist of sorts, they each have to let go of their difficult pasts and figure out what feels authentic to them in the present. I highlighted a few passages of Levi’s thoughts about Georgie and I also cried as life throws them a few hurdles.

If you can’t credit me with simply being a person who loves books and likes talking about them, at least credit me with enough common sense to be a better villain. Even though many of the themes have been done a million times before, it still felt fresh and genuine. Instead of finding a new PA job in Los Angeles, Georgie decides to move back home, to a small town in Virginia, to help her best friend, Bel, who is almost ready to give birth to her first baby.

Needless to say, Georgie and Levi are opposites but as the story progresses we see how these two very different people bring about positive changes in each other's lives, ultimately bringing them closer together. But this is also the kind of thing that might well be caught in a proofing pass, since it’s not about the scene itself, it’s about literal word positioning: so another mileage may vary / might actually not exist when the book comes out type situation. However, he has a successful business now, is somewhat antisocial, and is tenderhearted with his dog, Hank. Plus all the things I loved most about it were skimmed over more than I'd like, mostly Levi and his siblings and Georgie actually figuring out what she wants. I loved that the book told the story of two youngish (compared to me) people growing and learning to love themselves, people can learn a thing or two from this couple.

There's a wonderful storyline of forgiveness in this that made me want to hug my book after finishing. I would like to extend a special thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for providing me with this amazing digital reviewer copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

The characters were great and while I am not a huge fan of instant love and this one came close to that I thought it worked. Kate Clayborn's books are some of the best of the genre because they grapple with life-changing inheritances, tense friendship breakups, and fraught parental relationships in parallel with the deeply felt romances. When he offers to help with her quest, Georgie wonders if maybe Levi is more than just his reputation. Especially, I think, in the way it interrogates the "flighty, quirky, disaster heroine" archetype with Georgie. The smooth, vivid prose makes it easy to invest in the protagonists' well-rendered character growth.So here's where I start to fall apart and lose coherence, because I kind of cannot believe how well this book does both of those things. But I think, for me, what KC balances exceptionally well is a hero who can exist both as successful object of desire (Levi does manual work, for God’s sake, guy is ripped like woah) and is a fully rounded, emotionally nuanced human being in his own right. And win the lottery solely so I can afford to donate enough to a fancy college so that they have to name the library after it! The two see their predicament, but respectfully decide to share the place over the course of the next few weeks.

The side character of Georgie's BFF, Bel is exactly the type of best friend any woman would be lucky to have. Like the book tried to really dissect some topics that were pretty heavy for the characters, and just didn’t do it all that well.For instance: you know that scene in The Hating Game, when Lucy defends Joshua from his awful father? Georgie is back in town (temporarily) and ends up in a forced proximity situation with Levi Fanning. It's not a book without hardship—there’s genuine suffering in Levi’s background and Georgie’s sense of herself as blank and ambitionless can be hard to read at times—but it’s mostly a profoundly warm, hopeful, and accepting book. Despite all the time we spend tethered to screens, the truth is that humans live with technology, not in it--at least for now. Georgie and Levi each have an incredibly charged presence on the page as the story explores their individual narratives, but their differences allow them to forge an entirely perfect whole.