I love Valentine’s Day candy. Those big heart shaped boxes of chocolate wrapped in ridiculous amounts of foil and fake flowers may not always say love but they are always oh, so yummy. The problem is that they can be a bit too sweet and a bit too perky. But taken in small doses, sugary sweet and decadently, cheesily pretty can be quite wonderful.

Mandy Carter has only one living relative left – her four year old nephew. She has rearranged her entire life to take on his raising, comforted by the fact that she is honoring her beloved sister Mia’s dying request. For the last year Mandy has raised Kaden almost entirely as Mia and Jacob would have wanted – with the small exception of taking him to church. She hasn’t been to church in many years – and the loss of her beloved sister just gives her one more reason to be angry with a God who had already taken so much from her.

Daniel Brantley has always thought of Mandy as a beautiful, flighty princess who wants everything her way. When he receives an email from her saying she is overwhelmed by raising their nephew, he leaves the mission field to come home and do the job himself. Only when he arrives things are far different than what he expected. Mandy is an excellent mother, does a great job of running her small business – and is every bit as lovely as Daniel remembered. The unfortunate email had been sent after both she and Kaden had been hit with a bad bout of flu and the retraction that followed had been more sincere than her original plea to be freed from responsibility. Now Daniel must decide if he should fight for custody or fight to become a member of the perfect little family he sees before him.

The strength of this novel lies in the lovely way it captures its characters. Mandy and Daniel don’t really do anything extraordinary – Mandy is the town photographer and we have some terrific scenes of her working with Kaden by her side. Daniel is settling into a new job as youth minister and we watch him interact with his youth group. But their routine, mundane chores are highlighted by their shared love of Kaden and the recent tragedy in their past. Mandy and Daniel are very aware that it should be her sister and his brother who get to watch Kaden join little league, who should be setting up play dates, and making taco soup for dinner. The fact that they are the ones doing all these things lifts them from minor, everyday events to major accomplishments. Each little milestone reinforces that they are doing right by their nephew, that he is adjusting to this tough new world without mom and dad. I just loved the way this was depicted – the author got the balance in this area exactly right. There is a lovely scene with Kaden’s favorite bed time story that really highlights how well the author communicated this growing family through their special moments.

Mandy is a great character. She is a warm. loving mom but has maintained her fun girly nature. I loved that she would be well put together for the most part and then suddenly, Kaden would have a need and she was out of the house in mismatched shoes and hair going in every direction. I also appreciated that the author didn’t just brush aside Mandy’s understandable pain and confusion over what happened to her sister and brother-in-law. Since Mandy was living in the same town, a daily part of their lives, it seemed only natural that it hurt her deeply when they were taken so suddenly. Watching her wrestle with what happened really highlighted what had happened in the past with her character and what she would need changed for her to be able to go back to church and find peace with God. This inspirational is heavy on the faith issues, by the way. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being very religious and 1 being very little, this is about a 7 or 8. The faith issues are woven naturally into the story, but they are very prevelant.

I struggled a bit with Daniel. He seemed quite ready to be judgmental, and while Mandy’s flaws were addressed his never really were. I would have liked to have seen a bit more character growth with him. On the bright side, he truly appreciated Mandy and was willing to change his former opinion of her as he watched the new grown up Mandy in action.

This is a sweet, sentimental tale of what it takes to be a family. I would recommend this little gem to anyone who likes inspirational love stories. I found it a charming, rewarding read.