At her very core, Lily is a spontaneous, impetuous, passionate headstrong beauty who wants to experience life and love and all it has to offer. To the world in Toccoa, Lily is a refined, kind, demure beauty who has been married to the love of her life for three years. The war is over and Paul is coming home. Yet she can't shake the feeling that she's changed. Everyone married so suddenly at the start of World War II and she did love Paul and, on paper, he was perfect. But she was 17 when they married and she's no longer the girl she was. Will Paul love who's she become? One day, while coming home from shopping, Lily sees fireworks and stops to enjoy their beauty. Getting too close to the dangerous falling mortar, she's tackled to the ground and safety by Jake Russo, the fireworks man. Their feelings for each other are fast and real, and it's a crash course in reality, tragedy, and reawakening feelings within each other both thought they'd lost long ago.

This story tugged at the heartstrings and was beautifully written. Fans of Nicholas Sparks will enjoy Mr. Stepakoff's beautiful novel. There was a twist which brought the tears to my eyes swiftly a couple of times without the standard love and loss plot many novels like this have used.