Boiling Point

By Maeve Ridge

Off-Season, Book Four. A brand-new story with a new couple, never published before under any title. It is not a new edition of an earlier book.

Fifteen years of pining. One fake relationship. Everything boils over.

Hattie Brooks has no time for romance. She runs her family's hundred-year-old sugarhouse alone, her father is in a recliner after a stroke, the bank wants fifty-eight thousand dollars by April, and a luxury developer wants her trees.

Her only way out is the Maple Festival's Sugar Moon Couples Challenge: twenty-five thousand dollars, for committed couples only. So Hattie needs a boyfriend. A fake one. Her best friend Eli Marchetti, the bar owner and volunteer firefighter who's brought her coffee every Saturday since they were sixteen, volunteers far too fast.

They write the rules on a napkin. It ends at the festival. Nothing in private. Nobody falls in love.

Syrup relays, a pancake duel and a couples' quiz they ace because they know everything about each other. Then comes an all-night boil under the Sugar Moon, and the morning after, Hattie realizes he's memorized her.

There's just one thing she doesn't know. Eli has been in love with her since he was sixteen.

Inside BOILING POINT: Best friends to lovers, with fifteen years of piningFake dating, complete with a napkin contractA festival competition the whole town is betting onA golden-retriever hero and a stubborn, loud heroineA maple farm, a moon, and a very large puppyOpen-door romance with a guaranteed happily ever afterBoiling Point is Book Four of the Off-Season series. Each book follows a new couple in Larch Hollow, Vermont, and can be read as a standalone.

For adult readers. Contains explicit on-page intimacy, a parent who left (in the past), a parent's stroke and a later mini-stroke, farm debt, and a small sugarhouse fire (no one is hurt).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HMWLC73B
• ISBN13: 9798162148999
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"