Sign-In
Cart
Almost Always
Paperback
RomanceGeneral FictionLiterary Fiction
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
Publisher: Laura Carpenter
Published: Oct 15 2025
Pages: 348
Weight: 0.89
Height: 0.78 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
When a washed-up screenwriter is hired to run a writing retreat in a crumbling manor by the river, the last person he expects to meet is the woman who once ghostwrote his greatest success-and the daughter who changes everything.
Once upon a time, James Fallon was Hollywood's golden boy: clever, magnetic, impossible to work with. Then came silence, the lost decade, and a script he didn't actually write. Now he's retreating from the world-and the world has mostly returned the favour. When an eccentric arts foundation offers him one last chance to teach storytelling to strangers, he takes it. The pay is terrible, the plumbing worse, and the ghosts are all inconveniently alive.
Eliza Marquez was that ghost. Once his secret collaborator and uncredited heart, she's spent years rebuilding herself-raising her daughter, teaching craft, and keeping her name out of the credits that should have been hers. But when the retreat opens its doors to a dozen broken creatives, Eliza is invited to consult. As stormlight gathers over the house, she finds herself face-to-face with the man who made and unmade her career.
Over one extraordinary season by the river, the three of them-James, Eliza, and eleven-year-old Lucy-begin rewriting the stories they thought were over. What starts as a fragile truce becomes a luminous exploration of forgiveness, creative renewal, and the ordinary excellence of staying. Between a bench, a mirror, and a bowl of lemons, they rediscover how art heals what life fractures-and how love, once unspoken, can still be rewritten.
Almost Always is a deeply human, slow-burn literary romance about second chances, the power of words, and the courage to be seen as you really are. Told with Laura Carpenter's signature cinematic grace, it's a novel about what happens after The End-when people decide they're not finished yet.
Perfect for readers of Emily Henry, Taylor Jenkins Reid, and Jojo Moyes.
Also from
Carpenter, Laura
After the Wave: A small-town Irish romance about grief, saltwater, and second chances
Carpenter, Laura
Paperback
Smoke and Pancakes: grief and healing story women's fiction heartwarming homecoming contemporary novel
Carpenter, Laura
Paperback
She Stayed Anyway: A Novel of Motherhood, Grief, Second Chances, Madness, and the Mercy We Give Ourselves
Carpenter, Laura
Paperback
Also in
Romance
That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf (Mead Mishaps, Book 2)
Kimberly Lemming
Paperback
Sabine's Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Concludes
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
The Auction (Deluxe Limited Edition): A Spicy, Dark Romance Novel from a Tiktok Sensation
Kincaid, Sadie
Hardcover