Bailey Rhodes plans to spend just a few days back home in Virginia visiting her mother before she returns to her "fabulous" life in New York City. Once she arrives in Crestonville, however, Bailey finds that she isn't quite so eager to leave. Sure, Aunt Bits and Aunt Bubble still know exactly how to drive her crazy, and certainly, when her younger sister, Jeanne turns up pregnant and sans husband, it only proves that she is just as irresponsible as ever. And, of course, being surrounded by a bevy of local beauty contestants her aunts are "coaching" for the sixty-fourth annual Miss Tidewater Butter Bean Pageant is pretty darn annoying, but Crestonville does have one advantage over New York: hunky-agronomist-botanist Taylor Montgomery.

Neale takes the requisite elements of chick-lit fiction and neatly blends them together with a cast of quirky, yet surprisingly realistic characters and lots of saucy southern charm to create a story of family, friendship, and love that is deliciously and simply irresistible John Charles.