A novelist who can’t write. A doctor who won’t practice. A world moving on with or without them.
At the crossroads of their careers, two people meet on an idyllic island, where they hope that time would stand still for a change. As the brevity of life swirls around them, they have to make decisions they don't want to make.
Hunter’s Honor…
“He can’t fire me. I’m his favorite great-grandson. Besides, look at all my writing awards! Yes, it’s taking me a little while—okay, seven years long—to help him write his memoirs, but we’re going to get it done. I promise. Great-grandpa Hiram might be losing it if he thinks a no-name people walker—what kind of a job is that?—knows more about the Jacobs family than I do.” —Hunter Jacobs, Author in Distress, Reverend Hiram Jacobs’s Former Writing Assistant
Reverend Hiram Jacobs believes he is finally dying, and he wants his memoirs published before his hundred-and-fourth birthday.
Well, Hunter has his own book deadlines to juggle, and can’t Great-grandpa Hiram wait a few more months?
Unfortunately, Hunter’s writing career tanks. He loses his publishing contract since his books haven’t sold enough copies, and his agent fails to find a new publisher for his old manuscripts. His writing well has dried up, and he has been unable to write anything new for months.
Hunter sells his cottage in the Swiss Alps to pay off his debts, and flies home to coastal Georgia.
He wants to talk to Great-grandpa Hiram about his memoirs, hoping that it might reboot his writing career.
To Hunter’s surprise, Great-grandpa has found a new writing assistant, someone who isn’t even in the Jacobs family.
And Hunter is required to hand over everything he has worked on for seven years to her, an outsider who barely knows Great-grandpa for a year.
Stunned, Hunter feels stuck.
Priyanka’s Present…
“Hiram is sweet to let me write down those life stories he has been telling me when I bring flowers to the resort and walk with him in the afternoons. He thinks he’s running out of time, and sadly, I agree. Before he dies, he wants to sign his hardcover memoirs for his entire family. I’m going to help him finish the book that his great-grandson is taking too many years to write. How hard can it be? It’s not like emergency surgery.” —Priyanka Patel, Volunteer People Walker at the Savannah Senior Living Resort, Florist at Sea Glass Flower Shop in Savannah, Georgia
Yet there’s that faint scent of a defunct career, too dark, too painful for Priyanka to revisit. Here, renting a campground yurt on Tybee Island, she is far away from the surgical centers at pediatric hospitals and from that nightmare of a medical mission trip.
These days, Priyanka would rather cheer up the elderly residents of the Savannah Senior Living Resort by bringing them freshly-cut flowers, singing and praying with them, and listening to some of them tell sad stories about their children who never come to visit anymore. She spends mornings at the florist and afternoons at the SSLR, walking with the seniors who can, and wheeling them around if they cannot.
Hiram is Priyanka’s favorite patient—ah, friend.
The centenarian is losing his memory bit by bit, and the sooner Priyanka writes down everything about his life for his posterity, the better. His great-grandson is supposed to be compiling all his sermons, and if he’d hurry up, those can be published before Hiram dies.
Still, perhaps she should have turned down Hiram’s request for her to help him complete his memoirs.
And yet, her heart gets the better of her, and Priyanka says yes to helping an elderly gentleman fulfill his lifelong wish.
When life moves on and time runs out, Priyanka finds herself thrown together with Hunter, trying to catch up with the world around them that is moving faster than they can handle. Should they press forward and go along with it, or should they shrink back and return to their comfort zones? Or is there another way they haven’t thought of?
Tropes & Themes:
- Biracial romance
- International romance
- Workplace romance
- Coastal and island setting
- Indian-American family
- Former physician
- Novelist
- Life decisions
- Career decisions
- Island retirement community
- Great-grandpa relationship
- Centenarian
- Family dynamics overseas
- Large family reunion
- Glamping in yurts
- Tybee Island
- Savannah, Georgia
A multiracial international Christian romance, Kiss You Now is Book 8 in USA Today bestselling author Jan Thompson’s Savannah Sweethearts series of sweet, clean, wholesome, and inspirational multiethnic contemporary Christian romances celebrating faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ. These stories are set in the coastal city of Savannah, Georgia, and on the beaches of Tybee Island by the Atlantic Ocean.
