On the eve of her 30th birthday, dating columnist Cleo Wilder is sent to a remote Irish island to "marry herself" for an article.  Her plans to reconnect with herself and maybe finish one of the many half-written novels on her laptop are interrupted by Mack Sullivan, a distant cousin of her rented cottage's owner.  He's retreated to the island of his ancestors in the midst of a tumultuous divorce to try and give his wife and sons space to process and heal.  Forced to spend at least a week together, the two initially clash at every turn.  But each night, in the safety of their dark and cozy cottage, they share three facts about themselves.  They're slowly falling in love with the island, and with each other, but will they be able to move on when the holiday is over?

This is my first Josie Silver -- her other two books lean a little too sad for me -- and I can absolutely see why so many people love her work.  She's a wonderful writer, and this book balances the feels and the laughs really well.  Cleo and Mack are two interesting and (fairly) mature leads, and the island is populated with a lot of really lovely characters.

ONOTI had me bad decisions book clubbing hard, keeping me up until 12:45 on a weeknight, but I just couldn't put it down.  I wasn't sure if this would turn out to be a romance novel or just women's fiction with a strong romantic subplot, and I was dying to see how it all came together.  In the end, it is a romance novel, but I found the HEA a little unsatisfying.  For me, it was more of an HFN that could have been fleshed out in a paragraph or two more to really make it convincing.  I'm subtracting a star because the end left me wanting just a bit more, but it was a really, really delightful read.

Thank you Random House and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

deceased parent (off-page, remembered), parental infidelity (off-page, remembered), divorce, non-narrative side character is pregnant, another non-narrative side character dies