A brilliant debut from Melanie Moore, Are You Staying, Mandy Boyle? will have you laughing, crying, and aching with the frustrations and joys of taking huge risks and falling in love big time.

Mandy Boyle is thirty-five, still living with her stepfather in his rent-stabilized apartment, and still stuck as a copy editor at The New York Times, awaiting the next big layoff. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but ten years ago, she put her journalism career on hold and moved back to the city to care for her dying mother. Of course, she can’t be salty about that.

Then everything changes when Mandy wins a one-hundred-plus-year-old newspaper in Vermont and the apartment over it—a New Yorker’s dream! The only catch? She must run The Liberty Eagle for one year and can’t sell it to a conglomerate until that year is up. Sounds great, until Mandy discovers the Eagle is definitely old school, definitely not profitable, and that she is definitely in way over her head.

Suddenly she’s a city girl thrust into a quaint Vermont town at Christmastime, where everyone knows everything about each other. One plus? The mechanic in the next building, Greg Stewart, who keeps trying to sell her snow tires, is very easy on the eyes. Mandy would like to know more about him, but he’s plenty guarded. As she struggles to right the sinking newspaper, she bonds with people in the town, including a young woman who is losing her own mother to cancer, an emotional connection that cracks open Mandy’s own guarded heart.

Through it all, Mandy is drawn to Greg. He just may be her best friend. Maybe the love of her life. But how can two such guarded hearts ever fully fall for each other—especially when Mandy is sure she’ll be leaving by the time next Christmas rolls around?