Magnificent Agony — Katie Mettner

Eve Darling has learned one very important lesson in her twenty-six years; life never goes according to plan The night of her high school graduation her heart was bursting with hopes and dreams for the future, but the universe had other ideas. Instead of New York and culinary school, she stayed in Magnificent, Wisconsin. Barely an adult herself, Eve was irrevocably tasked with becoming a mother to her big brother, Davis, a man with the heart and mind of a five-year-old boy. Now, seven years later, she's become a successful entrepreneur, chef, and businesswoman. All of those responsibilities came at a price and her personal life was payment. No one was more acutely aware of that than she was. And then, with one phone call, everything changed. ‘After life organizer' Abraham Von Sallage was not like any funeral director Eve had ever known. He was young, charming, witty, and had a unique perspective on life, because his business was death. They both carried burdens society couldn't, or wouldn't, acknowledge, and because of those burdens, they found an instantaneous connection. That night, as Abraham stood in the doorway of her cooking school, she saw hope in his eyes. And then her world crumbled. An inexplicably cruel twist of fate called into question everything she knew about life, and death. With her soul adrift in guilt, she clung to the only person she could trust to save her from the agony her life had become. Shrouded by grief, it would take the love of one man, and the resolve of an entire community, to show her just how magnificent life could be.