THE DAD SHIFT

Marigold Reyes came back to Pelican Cove to fix her late grandmother’s bait shop — not to fix her life, not to find herself, definitely not to become a daily fixture in her grumpy neighbour’s morning routine. She has a plan: get the shop profitable in six months and prove that coming home was a real decision and not a grief impulse. She is very good at plans.

Then a six-year-old appears on her porch at 7am and sits down like she lives there.

Bea Calloway is cheerful, forthright, and operating on a timeline only she can see. Her marine rescue swimmer father shows up a few minutes later, every morning, looking mortified and apologetic and quietly relieved to have somewhere for Bea to be. The deal takes thirty seconds to strike: Mari opens early, Bea has somewhere safe to land, and Connor fixes the broken reel display. It was supposed to last two weeks. That was May.

Before the arrangement can end quietly on its own — there’s a broken door hinge he fixes without being asked because he had the tool in his pocket, a fishing lesson that draws an audience before the second lure hits the water, a dock lunch that becomes three dock lunches, four minutes of Connor explaining water behaviour to Mari in the specific voice he uses when he cares about something and Mari not looking away, a Father’s Day card with a crayon drawing of all three of them on the dock (the fish in the correct location, because Bea checked), and the moment Connor tells Loretta he’s been finding things to fix in the shop for six weeks after the reel display was finished.

She’s spent years building toward a version of herself that looks impressive from the outside — good city, good career, bigger life — and come home to find that none of it fits the way cedar and salt air does. He’s been in single-dad mode so long he’s confused management for living, and Mari keeps making him want things he’d stopped remembering to want.

It’s almost Father’s Day. Bea has an agenda. And the arrangement is running out of road.

A warm, funny slow-burn coastal romance where the hardest thing isn’t admitting it — it’s stopping pretending you haven’t noticed. The kind of book you read in the morning sun and then think about for the rest of the day.

WHY THIS WILL SELL

→ Single Dad ranks at $106K/month with a competition index of 100 (maximum efficiency) — highest sales-to-competition ratio in the male character data; undersupplied relative to demand right now

→ Small Town ($404K/month) + Slow Burn ($261K/month) is the most proven stack in the current Top 100 — this combination appears repeatedly in the Top 30 with no sign of softening

→ Nanny/caretaker archetype returns a competition index of 100 on the female character side — rising reader demand, not yet saturated; the informal-caretaker variant adds freshness

→ Father’s Day publication window is underpopulated relative to Valentine’s Day — lower ad costs, less noise, same holiday-reader purchase behaviour in the two-week pre-holiday spike

→ Coastal small-town cover aesthetic is the top-performing visual in the current romantic comedy Top 30 — cover direction is market-aligned by setting, not by design choice

→ KU-native readership — single dad and caretaker subgenre readers binge in Kindle Unlimited; series readthrough is structurally built in

TROPES:
• Single Dad
• Small Town
• Slow Burn
• Opposites Attract
• Grumpy/Sunshine
• Matchmaking Child
• Forced Proximity (Neighbourly Edition)
• Deal/Arrangement
• Found Family 

HEAT LEVEL: Sweet to Moderate 

Perfect for fans of: Talia Hibbert, Helena Hunting, Laurie Gilmore, and Becka Mack