They Have One Year to Pretend … Or Risk Losing Everything

Snapshot by Kay Cove

"Snapshot is an engaging and heart-warming read, showcasing a highly authentic couple whose unwavering trust and belief in each other just might transform a can’t-possibly-work relationship into a meant-to-be happily ever after."

The best romance novels often work off the dichotomy between the story’s meant-to-be and can’t-possibly-work elements. Kay Cove’s latest novel, Snapshot, delivers beautifully on both, with plot twists and outside characters that seriously threaten a happily-ever-after ending. For added depth, Cove intertwines two love stories, one from a grandmother’s distant past and the other pairing a scuba-diving grandson with his best friend, a newly jobless young woman whose attempts to do the right thing — like pay off her dad’s debts with her own tuition money — never seem to get her the man she needs or a job she can love. 

A Grandmother’s Last Wish Turns Their World Upside Down

The first chapter of the novel takes place in Miami, the only chapter told from the point-of-view of the indomitable grandmother Dottie Hessler. Having ably headed her deceased husband’s billion-dollar cruise line company — Hessler Group Holdings — into her twilight years, Dottie reflects on two things: letting go of the love of her life and worry over the happiness of Dex, the grandson she’s raised.  Concerned that Dex has “barricaded himself in his office” since grad school, Dottie presents him with a dive shop in Las Vegas — one that an old friend of hers owned for years, until his recent passing — and orders Dex to leave Miami and the family business behind for a while. 

Three years later Dex loves his dive shop but his dating habits suggest he will never be happy in love. That triggers Dottie to go even further. Dex cannot repeat her same mistake. 

The first Dex knows of her plan is at the reading of her will. 

“In the matter of Hessler Group Holdings, I nominate Dex Malcolm Hessler’s legal spouse to inherit my majority shares in full, which are then to be locked from transfer or distribution for a minimum of a twelve-month period. Just like that. One simple sentence has changed the entire trajectory of my life.” 

A Fake Marriage and the Secrets They Can’t Ignore

Dex’s options feel impossible: spend twelve months married to one of the insufferable gold-diggers who populate his dating pool or lose his entire inheritance. When it comes to a possible wife, only one person makes any sense at all: his best friend Lennox Mitchell. In their first meeting three years ago his attraction to her hit him hard as did her honesty and bravery. “Basically, this woman is a hundred f****** layers of interesting.“ But fearing of he might the most authentic connection he’s ever felt with a woman, Dex has kept the relationship to friendship only. She’s the only woman he trusts.

The timing is ideal for Lennox. Her latest boyfriend who has never once satisfied her in bed has just dumped her. She’s also just been fired from a job she hated for hanging up on a customer who called her an “illiterate, uneducated c***, and told me to use whatever few brain cells I had to transfer him to someone who spoke English.” As icing to this awful cake, Lennox gets kicked out of her apartment when authorities show up to inform her that her deadbeat roommate — the only person on the lease — stopped paying their rent months ago. So when Lennox shows up at Dex’s place to ask his help in moving her mattress a desperate Dex proposes his plan: a fake one-year marriage ending in a divorce and a payout in the millions of dollars. The money will transform Lennox’s life overnight, and Dex’s inheritance will be secure. 

But it’s not so easy. The money means nothing to Lennox if the arrangement requires hiding her feelings for Dex, even if they are “feelings unreturned.” For Dex it is the same. “Her honesty is addicting. I don’t know how to explain it…she’s changing my mind about everything. Maybe changing my heart.” What if the marriage needs to be real to work for them? Isn’t that the only way? 

But company managers object strenuously to having a woman with no business experience head the vast Hessler Group empire. At the same time details surface about Dottie’s lost love that question Dex’s legitimate claim to the Hessler inheritance. 

When Trust Turns into the Love of a Lifetime

Snapshot is the second book in Cove’s Lessons in Love series. The first novel in the series, Camera Shy, has no plot ties to this second book. However, the protagonists of the first book — Lennox’s cousin Finn and his girlfriend Avery — play cameo roles as Dex’s neighbors in the second, just as Dex and Lennox play cameo roles in the first.

Told in alternating points-of-view between Dex and Lennox, Snapshot is an engaging and heart-warming read, showcasing a highly authentic couple whose unwavering trust and belief in each other just might transform a can’t-possibly-work relationship into a meant-to-be happily ever after.