How to Align the Stars

Publisher's Weekly calls Amy Dressler's new novel a "sparkling debut."

This is the story of two cousins: one with stars in her eyes, the other with her eyes on the stars...

Beatrice is a stubborn, no-nonsense astronomy professor at a small college in wine country. While working toward her tenure, she spends an inordinate amount of time avoiding Ben, an annoying librarian she believes wronged her when they were students. Their rapid-fire exchanges could almost be mistaken for chemistry, if he hadn't done that unspeakable thing so many years ago.

Her younger cousin Heron is a wistful senior in college. The opposite of Beatrice, she is a hopeless romantic, pinning her hopes on a future with her boyfriend. After he proposes on a magical night at her father's winery, Bea is worried her younger cousin is making a mistake. Heron responds to Bea's criticism with a matchmaking scheme designed to show Bea the upside of romance.

Bea and Ben are the subjects of an opposites-attract experiment, while Heron begins to question whether marriage is the right choice. Her world comes crashing down when she is at the center of a campus scandal, reigniting anxiety from her mother's sudden departure so many years ago.

As Heron and Bea deal with the fallout from the scandal, each finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about the best course for the future. Eventually, each woman must make a choice: Bea between the comfortable role of merry spinster or a fulfilling partnership; Heron between marriage or reaching for a new dream.

Amy Dressler's whip-smart debut novel is not to be missed, a tour de force of female empowerment, romantic comedy, and family friendship as she turns Shakespeare upside down in an unexpected and brilliant way for a new generation of women.

Tropes: Enemies to lovers, STEM romance, Academic feud, Small town college romance