Those of us who grew up in small towns seem to be in one of two camps: we either love them or we feel compelled to escape them. In Janine Rosche’s heartfelt new novel, A Hometown Kind of Love, she examines these two disparate views through the eyes of her protagonists, Lucas Hemingway and Rowan Wilkes, high school sweethearts whose lives take them in very different directions after graduation.

Meanwhile, Lucas stays behind, content to embrace his small-town life and become the high school football coach. Yet even as he builds a rewarding career working with and mentoring local teens, his heart aches for the girl who got away. He has never been able to fully fathom why anyone would ever leave and not return. “Life was slower, sure, but it was real—roots deep and tangled in soil that held memories generations older than him,” and those are the things that matter most to him.

Then Rowan’s sister, Jenna, invites her back for a special event taking place at Maple Lake’s homecoming football game. Unable to avoid the return home, Rowan is once again confronted with her past, Lucas, and all the feelings that comes along with such a reunion. Will a three week visit to Maple Lake be enough time for this pair to mend fences and perhaps even give their long-remembered first love a second chance?

Janine Rosche is one of those rare authors whose writing captivates you from the first page and won’t let go. Her characters are not larger than life heroes and heroines, but instead are the types of folks many of us grew up with. They are flawed, relatable, and altogether very human.

As such, this book feels more like a letter from home than a novel written about fictitious people someone dreamed up. That’s why Rowan and Lucas work their way into our hearts so deftly and keep us compulsively turning pages.

A Hometown Kind of Love is authentic, genuine, and engaging, and readers will be delighted to laugh and cry along with the author who pours her heart out on each page, which proves to be her winning storytelling formula that is both entertaining and inspiring, and definitely the type of story we need these days.

If you enjoy stories by Debbie Macomber, Jill Shalvis and RaeAnne Thayne, you should definitely add Janine Rosche to your list of must-read authors.