Unromantic: A Love Story

“I remember you much better now, by the way.” Charlie said. He had changed his clothes and looked cleaner, although not much tidier, and his face was more animated, more alive. He was handsome actually, she thought, when he wasn’t on the verge of a hangover. “You were good at catching fireflies, I think.”
“And you ruined my book.” Jane kicked back with her toes to swing.
“Yes - yes I did,” he said. “You told me you forgave me.”
“I did too.”
“Forgiven but not forgotten. I see how it is.”

As the housekeeper for the Pratt family, and her mother the housekeeper before her, Jane isn’t likely to forget anything about Charlie. She has grown up with the Pratt family at their lake house in Vermont, first as the housekeeper’s daughter, and now as the housekeeper herself. But for devout and prudent Jane, firm in her Christian belief and certain that God made her for a higher purpose in life, unprincipled Charlie’s sudden interest in her causes her more anxiety than pleasure.
She is also worried about her childhood friend Charlotte. The daughter of Jane’s employers, Charlotte is being drawn into a new world of expensive living and promiscuous parties by her wealthier cousins, and the pull becomes almost irresistible when the rich and predatory Nathan Harrison singles her out. But what looks like love to Charlotte looks like trouble to Jane.

Jane only begins to understand the trouble she is in when Charlie starts turning up at the most unexpected times, getting her alone with him and asking uncomfortable questions about what she wants out of her life. It’s hard to deny that Charlie’s intentions are more than she first imagined, but her commitment to her Christian principles is putting her at risk of becoming decidedly unromantic.