Where the Mountain Keeps Us: A Sweet Cozy Contemporary Small-Town Romance

A solitary mountain man with a cozy fireside lodge, a woman healing from heartbreak, and a snow-dusted town of sweet, nosy neighbours who might just orchestrate the love story neither saw coming.

Hazel

When I discovered my fiancé's betrayal, I did the one thing he'd never expect—I took the writer's retreat I'd planned for him and claimed it for myself. Finding peace in a remote mountain town seemed perfect... until I learned the cabin had burned down. Now I'm stranded at the home of Ethan Calloway, a quiet mountain man whose brooding exterior hides unexpected kindness.

What was supposed to be three months of solitude has become something else entirely. Maple Ridge is a town where people trade biscotti like currency, where candlelight is preferred to electricity, and where, somehow, I feel more seen than I ever did in the city. The more I settle into Ethan's world—into his home with its too-large dining table that never had guests before me—the more I question if the life waiting for me is the one I truly want.

Ethan

I moved back to the mountains to find community yet spent years keeping everyone at arm's length. I built this lodge with extra rooms no one used and a dining table no one sat at. Then Hazel arrived—vibrant, talkative, entirely too much—and suddenly my quiet house was filled with laughter, neighbours dropping by, and a warmth I didn't know was missing.

She fits here, bringing the town to my doorstep without even trying. But she has a plane ticket out, a job waiting, a life that doesn't include these mountains or me. The logical thing would be to let her go. But for the first time in my life, I'm finding that logic has nothing to do with what I want.