so nice to have you back where you belong

Dolly Brick is a single mom working four jobs. In Boston, she is a kindergarten teacher, an occasional Uber driver, and a customer service rep for Good Sports, which sells weighted vests. When she goes back to Whitfield, Rhode Island, where she was raised, she jumps in and helps at her father’s fish shop. Brick Fish House has been in the family for generations. Dolly started working there when she was a teenager, and now her thirteen-year-old son Gus is jumping in to help also.

Dolly hadn’t planned on spending the summer in Whitfield, but she was awakened in the wee hours of the morning with a call about a fire at her dad’s house. She and Gus were going to visit for two weeks, but now Dolly has to see how badly the house has been damaged and make sure that her father and brother Christopher are safe.

She was just a kid when their mother left. Dolly knew that she had to be the one to step in and help out with her sister Patsy and brother Christopher, who has brain damage from a car accident. She and her father divided up the tasks from home and the fish house, and they kept moving forward. Eventually, Dolly left for Boston, where she went to college, became a teacher, and had a kid, so she became a caretaker again.

On a her way back from a delivery, she finds Stewart Whitfield with a flat tire. He can’t get ahold of his assistant, and he doesn’t know what to do. Dolly is on her bike, but she stops to help. Since she takes care of everyone, of course she knows how to change a tire, and she shows Stewart how to complete the task. Stewart is a part of the Whitfields, the family that the town is named for, and he just got dumped by his fiancee. So when someone driving by takes his photo with Dolly, he needs to spin it in the right direction.

Meanwhile, Dolly gets a visit from the fire chief. When they were putting the fire out, they had been on the roof, and they saw a lot of damage. It had been there for a long time, and either they need to replace the roof or the house will be unlivable. So when Stewart comes to her with the crazy idea for her to pretend to be his girlfriend for the summer, offering her more than enough money to cover a new roof, Dolly says yes.

At first, her new job is about getting a new haircut and new clothes for the summer’s activities. But as the days go on and Dolly finds herself loosening up in his world and having some fun, her heart stops thinking of the relationship as an act. Stewart seems to be enjoying himself too, taking time off from work to go sailing and to ball games for the first time maybe ever. But when the truth about the start of their relationship comes out, Dolly feels set aside, and she has to figure out what it is that she wants for the rest of her life, not for her father, not for her brother, not for her son, but just for herself.

Dolly All the Time is the latest novel from Annabel Monaghan, and it’s another perfect summer read. While the fake relationship story can be corny and artificial, Monaghan writes characters who are so honest and real that she makes it work. When we first meet Dolly, she’s just come back home after the fire, and she’s looking around at all the things she can fix. She cleans the kitchen and finishes the laundry and talks about sanding and repainting the wood that got damaged and regrouting the kitchen floor, and it’s all a little exhausting. But she’s a good soul, and she just wants to make sure everyone around her is okay. The more time I spent with her, the more I fell in love with her and wanted her to be happy.

Dolly All the Time is a romance, but it’s also about a woman who learns to stand up for herself. After a lifetime of taking care of others, she has to learn to let others take care of her. She has to find her own voice, and her own dreams, and her own life. She is smart and strong, and I think there are a lot of women, me included, who learned to be a caretaker of others first and only figured out to take care of themselves later. Dolly is our hero, our voice, our saint.

Egalleys for Dolly All the Time were provided by Putnam through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.