Not What We Pictured
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Apr 21, 2026
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This is absolutely not how they pictured their summer going.
McKenna Boston is feeling stuck. She's spent years growing her photography skills only for her career to hit a wall. She's ready to move on, and she will, just as soon as she helps her sister's boyfriend stage the perfect proposal. But when her best laid plans go awry and a handsome stranger accidentally ends up with the heirloom ring, McKenna hops on a flight to retrieve it. Piece of cake, right?
Nate Lambert was hoping to enjoy a relaxing summer before starting his new job as a literature professor, but he arrives in Tennessee to discover his mom's bed and breakfast is struggling and there's a long list of repairs to be tackled. The last thing he needs is a gorgeous, determined photographer searching for a ring he doesn't have since the airline lost his luggage somewhere on his route from Nebraska.
With the ring nowhere to be found, all McKenna can do is wait and use the time to build her portfolio and plan her next career move. But she also can't help getting swept up in Nate's bed and breakfast renovations and in planning a community concert with the townsfolk. As both await news of Nate's suitcase, it begins to seem their serendipitous meeting, and the proposal gone wrong, could actually be everything going right . . . and that this may be their chance at a love neither could have pictured.
• A clean, witty rom com with a forced proximity trope and a reluctant allies love story
• Features laugh-out-loud humor and a sweet, endearing couple
• This contemporary summer romance with a Southern small-town setting is great for fans of Sarah Adams, Pepper Basham, and Emma St. Clair
• Includes discussion questions for book clubs
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This sweet if silly romance from Kinzer (First Love, Second Draft) pairs an ambitious photographer with a handsome English teacher. McKenna Boston, 32, has looked out for her younger sister Bobbi since their mom died 12 years ago, so she's excited to finally leave Nebraska and strike out on her own in Los Angeles, where she's been offered a high-flying photography gig. First, however, she wants to see Bobbi get engaged to her longtime boyfriend, so she hatches a scheme to photograph the proposal at a local park. When McKenna's plan to hide the ring in the bushes goes awry—she accidentally slips it into the pocket of the attractive man she forces to vacate the bench where Bobbi's boyfriend plans to propose—she must track the stranger down at his mom's bed-and-breakfast in Tennessee, the Happy Hiccup. But it turns out that English teacher Nate stowed the ring in a bag the airline has lost. While waiting for the luggage, he and McKenna bond over their shared feelings of abandonment—Nate by his deadbeat musician dad; McKenna, who's adopted, by her biological parents—and their struggles to put their trust in God. While their banter can be cringe-worthy, the central premise is charming and the cast of side characters, like perpetually hungry Gus and spunky Georgie, two quirky locals who hang around the Happy Hiccup, are appealingly goofy. The result is a funny and fast-paced romp.
