I walk him over to the section, pull out a reliable favorite, and start describing it.
“So the protagonist inherits this old bookshop from her aunt, and there’s this man in town who seems cold at first but actually has a secret past, and she starts getting these mysterious notes, and?—”
I stop.
That’s not a cat mystery. That’s a romance. There’s no feline. Why did I even pull this book?
The man is staring at me.
“You know what, let me find you something else.” I shove the book back on the shelf and grab an actual cozy mystery—one with a tabby on the cover and a punny title about cat-astrophic murders. “This one. Your wife will love it.”
He leaves, looking relieved to escape.
Caroline updates the Post-it.
Secret Identity Recs: II
“That one didn’t count. I caught myself.”
“You described a secret identity romance for forty-five seconds before catching yourself. It counts.”
Customer number three is the worst.
She’s a regular—comes in every few weeks, always knows exactly what she wants. Today she marches up to the counter with purpose.
“I need a palate cleanser,” she announces. “I just finished a book where the hero lied to the heroine for three hundred pages, and I wanted to throw it across the room. I need something where the guy is honest from the start. No secrets. No hidden identities. Just a straightforward love story.”
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
My brain is shuffling through every romance novel I’ve ever read, and I cannot think of a single one where the hero doesn’t have at least one secret. A hidden fortune. A mysterious past. An identity he’s concealing. A reason he can’t tell her the truth.
“Um,” I say.
The customer waits.
“I’m sure there’s... something...”
“You run a romance bookstore, and you can’t think of one honest hero?”
“They’re all honest eventually!”
“But not from the start?”
I picture Scott, and the letters. Three different men who turned out to be one man who’d been hiding from me the entire time.
“No,” I say quietly. “Not from the start.”
The customer sighs. “Fine. Give me another liar. At least make him grovel properly at the end.”
I find her a book with excellent groveling. She leaves satisfied.
Caroline updates the Post-it.
Secret Identity Recs: II (+ existential crisis)
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
