This week’s Wednesday reads was another one that I’d heard about again and again from other readers but hadn’t gotten around to reading myself. I think this one may be the first Courtney Walsh book that I’ve ever read, actually, so clearly I’m late to the game!

Paper Hearts is a story about Abigail, a bookstore owner in a quaint little town in the mountains known for its romance and traditions. Abigail doesn’t buy into the idea of love, though, thanks to a father who essentially abandoned her and a breakup that left her blindsided. Her comfortable (if not especially happy) life is thrown into chaos when a man named Jacob comes into town and buys her building with plans to renovate it into a medical office, forcing her to abandon all the big dreams she had for expanding her business. Abigail somewhat reluctantly joins up with a group of influential women in town, hopeful that they’ll help save her business if she assists them in their efforts to promote even more romance in their small town. They assign her the job of piecing together the story of some mysterious paper hearts which chronicle the love story of an unknown couple…

The story goes back and forth between Abigail and Jacob (who – spoiler alert – is kind of important to the story in more ways than one), but my favorite characters were the ladies in that group Abigail joins, particularly Ursula, who is no nonsense and gets things done. The pace of the story worked well, and I thought that everything was revealed at the right time, all to be tied up well in the end. I did find myself wishing that Jacob would be a little more assertive about everything (because he wasn’t all that desirable for most of the book as he was pushed around by his business manager), but even that set this book apart from most romance novels, as it was Abigail who really turned out to be the hero as the plot unfolded.

I will definitely read more by this author in the future and would totally recommend this book!