Kiss, Cry, Reply

They say eyes are the window to the soul. Personally, I think emails are.I'm Gretchen Smith, quiet dreamer and outcast waitress. I work in a tavern. My life is not pretty. Like Cinderella in the fairy tale, I know what struggle is, my reputation is in tatters, and I have serious scars.When a family tragedy shatters the foundation of my life, I'm forced to turn to a stranger - Mike Wethers, the town's golden boy. This gorgeous, pampered man does not realize it, but by a twist of fate he holds the key to my future.But as the CEO of the international dating service Sumloven.com, Mike is treated like a royal prince. He is popular, wealthy, and completely walled off, impossible to contact when you're a mere nobody like me.By sheer luck, I gain his notice...only to be turned away with one curt, dismissive email. And that seems to be that.But then that one email turns into two...then three...then four. With every message, every text, something changes between us. The unlikely friendship we seem to be weaving in the virtual world almost seems real.A dangerous illusion. I cannot depend on anybody, let alone him. Wherever our online back-and-forth takes us, we both know meeting in person would be a disaster. He's still the idolized man the gossip rags can't stop talking about...and I'm still a public target.The closer we get, the more the line between us widens with what we can't say....A rich boy. A poor girl. An intense slow burn that grows out of texts, emails, posts, and throwaway scribbles. A different kind of epistolary romance.This book is part of the Love in New Highland series. Each book is a standalone and quite different. You don't need to read them in any particular order. They're linked by the fact that they each take place in the fictional city of New Highland, Washington. Besides that, characters do visit each other's stories.