The Quiet Season

A Second-Chance Romance of Forced Proximity, a Friends-to-Lovers Slow Burn, Workplace Tension, and the Family They Almost LostBy Mara Whitfield

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Length7h 12m

About this audiobook

She built walls so well she didn't notice they were a prison. Cora Delaney has one rule: never need anyone. She runs her salt-worn bakery in Ormond, Maine, measuring flour by feel and keeping the world at arm's length. She knows the weight of need. She learned it watching her mother treat love like leverage. Six months ago, her husband Finn quietly moved out. Now Cora wakes before dawn, kneading dough in a silent house, calling the hollow ache in her ribs exhaustion. She's fine. Then Margot appears on the bakery steps with a cashmere wrap and a bombshell: she's dying. Margot — the woman who abandoned Cora's father, who taught her that vulnerability is weakness and love is just silk-wrapped control — wants to spend her final months being cared for by the daughter she barely raised. Before Cora can refuse, Finn walks through the door. He's not there for her, he says. Margot asked him. One house. One Maine winter. Two people who never stopped loving each other, and the woman who has been pulling their strings for decades. Forced under the same roof as the snow piles against the sea wall, Cora and Finn fall into a brittle routine — shared coffee, avoided glances, the unbearable intimacy of someone who still knows exactly how you take your tea. Finn is quieter now. More guarded. Still patient in the way that makes her want to scream. And Cora cannot stop watching him when she thinks he isn't looking. As Margot's illness forces old secrets to the surface — the real reason she came back, the truth about the night Finn left — Cora faces the question she has spent her whole life running from: is she willing to tear down everything she built to keep herself safe, or will she wait until it's too late and become the one thing she swore she'd never be? Her mother. The Quiet Season is a deeply emotional women's fiction novel about second chances, the walls we inherit, and the quiet devastation of almost waiting too long to let someone love you. Perfect for readers who love slow burn romance, forced proximity, marriage-in-crisis, friends-to-lovers with history, coastal New England settings, and the raw heart of Marie Bostwick and Ann Napolitano. Standalone romance with a hard-earned happy ending.

Family Healing Betrayal Redemption Domestic Thriller Psychological Grief Second Chance Small Town