Why I Wrote Coming Home: A Second-Chance, Small-Town Romantic Suspense Set on Virginia’s Eastern Shore; Baytown Boys Book 1
I didn’t set out to write a book about home. I set out to write a book about a place.
Four years before I ever typed a word of this story, my husband and I drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel onto a skinny strip of land I hadn’t even known existed… the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
Marshy on the Atlantic Ocean side and small white sandy beaches on the Chesapeake Bay side. There were towns so small you could miss them if you blinked as you drove along the main road that traveled south to north through the two Virginia counties that aren’t connected to the mainland of Virginia.
We fell in love with the town of Cape Charles, where there are no traffic lights, men sat outside the hardware store, and there was only one main street with shops. The rest of the town was simple on a grid filled with houses built in the 1800s. It also was home to the only public beach in the county.
South of the main part of town was a resort, and we bought a small condo. We started walking the beach every morning, and I would fill my pockets with sea glass.
Somewhere between the tide pools and the sunsets, the character of Mitch Evans, FBI in my Saints Protection and Investigation series, came to mind. What if he didn’t join the Saints? What if he left the FBI to return home to a small, beach town to become the town’s police chief?
And suddenly, the idea of a series on the Eastern Shore was born.
So Coming Home feels like it’s about more than just two people falling in love. It feels like it’s also about roots, family, friends, and starting over in a place that had raised you.
What It’s About
Coming Home is book one in my Baytown Boys series — a small-town romantic suspense with a second-chance, childhood-sweethearts heart at its center.
Mitch Evans left Baytown, Virginia and joined the Army, and eventually became an FBI agent. He had the kind of golden-boy career his police-chief father and grandfather were proud of. But when his dad’s heart attack means an early retirement, Mitch trades federal cases for small-town budget meetings, and finds himself standing on a familiar porch, face to face with the girl he never stopped thinking about.
Tori Bradford spent every childhood summer on the Eastern Shore, and she’s finally come home for good, too… running her late grandmother’s bed-and-breakfast, the Sea Glass Inn. She’s trying to build a quiet life after a marriage that ended in the worst possible way.
She was six years old the first time she fell for Mitch. She’s not six anymore, and neither is he.
What starts as a sweet, slow-burn reunion turns dangerous fast, when someone in Baytown decides Tori is worth more dead than alive. As Mitch works the case with his new department, and leans on the found family of veteran friends drifting back to town, the ones they used to call the Baytown Boys, he has to figure out who wants Tori gone before he loses her twice.
It’s a book about protector heroes, family and found family, and the magic of a hometown you didn’t know you missed until you were standing in it again.
Who This Book Is For
If you love a military hero turned small-town police chief, the kind of man who kisses a woman on her own front porch just to make her ex-husband leave, this is your guy. If you’re the reader who always roots for the childhood-sweethearts-reunited couple, Mitch and Tori were built for you.
Readers who love Susan Stoker’s protector-hero suspense, Rebecca Zanetti’s small-town military romance, or Elle James’s coastal, close-knit-community books tend to feel right at home here. Think veteran-hero romantic suspense meets Hallmark-coastal-town-you-
It’s also, quietly, a book for anyone hunting for found-family veteran fiction. Mitch’s whole reason for coming home isn’t just Tori, it’s reconnecting with the guys he grew up with and now invites other veteran friends to come visit… or discover their forever home.
If you’re searching for standalone-but-connected small-town romance series, or a whodunit thread inside a romance, or just a beachy, sea-glass-and-Chesapeake-Bay setting to disappear into for a weekend, Coming Home answers all three.
FAQ
Is Coming Home a standalone, or do I need to read the rest of the series first? It’s a complete standalone with a full happily-ever-after. You can start here. It’s also book one of the Baytown Boys, so Mitch and Tori’s friends get their own books later, and you’ll meet familiar faces if you keep going.
Does Coming Home have romance, or is it more suspense/mystery? Both, woven together. The love story between Mitch and Tori is the heart of the book, but there’s a genuine attempted-murder mystery running alongside it. Someone wants Tori dead, and figuring out who is just as much a part of the plot as the romance is.
What’s the heat level? It’s a slow-burn that pays off…open-door, with a couple of steamy scenes once Mitch and Tori finally get together.
Is Coming Home similar to Susan Stoker or Caitlyn O’Leary’s military small town romantic suspense series? Yes, if you love protector heroes and found-family teams, a small-town twist on the same instinct: dangerous man, woman in danger, a found family that shows up when it matters.
Does the book end on a cliffhanger? No. Mitch and Tori get their full happy ending… married, with an epilogue set ten years later, even though the series continues with new couples.
If you’ve been looking for a second-chance, small-town romantic suspense with a genuine sense of place, I hope Baytown feels like coming home to you, too.
Available on Amazon: ebook to purchase or read with Kindle Unlimited, as well as print & audio.
