Don't Date Him

All Birdee Calvert wanted was to be normal. She wanted the parents who didn’t divorce when she was a kid and make her life a living nightmare. She wanted the sisters who actually liked her. She wanted to live in a town where everyone loved her and didn’t have a single bad thing to say about her. That was not the life Birdee was given. She had the exact opposite life. The kind of life where she slunk through the grocery store with a hoodie on so no one would recognize her. The kind of life where men like Creed Daugherty didn’t give her a second look.

Edith “Eddy” Wheeler was having a bad day. A no good, very bad day. It’s understandable, really. I mean, there didn’t seem to be anything worse than walking in on your elderly parents doing things no child should ever see. Add into that their proclivities, and Eddy is disgusted and disturbed. So of course, after seeing the atrocious things her parents—the pastor and pastor’s wife that are supposed to be holy and a teacher of faith—are into, she makes it her life goal to expose them to their masses.

I blame getting pregnant on my sister getting mauled by a bear. If she hadn’t been attacked that day, I wouldn’t have come home to check on her. I wouldn’t have run into Boone Windsor at that bar. I wouldn’t have gone home with him, ready to drown my sorrows in a different, more satisfying way. I wouldn’t have given him that second chance. Not after he’d so badly burned the first chance. I would’ve gone back to work half the country away, and I would’ve kept my head in the sand where Boone was involved.

Holly Lorena Cain, formerly known as Georgina Lorena Cain, was well acquainted with rock bottom. She’s coasted along its rocky shores for years. It all started when her mother left her when she was barely old enough to understand. For years, her and her dad struggled to make ends meet. A dying cattle farm can’t run itself, and with her dad having cancer, it got harder and harder to hang on to land that’s been in her family for generations. Just as she thinks that she’s finally made it, her father passes away and leaves every single thing he owns to their neighbor.