Not every fairytale starts with once upon a time.

She built an empire one spreadsheet at a time. Now she’s burying the woman who raised her, facing the man she once left behind, and discovering a life she never planned—but might just need.

Rachel Ashcroft has everything she thought she wanted—a high-powered career, a luxury apartment, and a calendar so full she doesn’t have time to breathe. But when her grandmother passes away, she’s forced to return to the sleepy hometown she once fled and the house full of memories she never meant to inherit.

She expects to be in and out in a day or two—funeral, paperwork, done. Instead, she finds childhood memories, a golden retriever who runs the place, and Daniel, the quiet biologist staying in her grandmother’s woods. He’s older now. Softer in the eyes. But still the same man who kissed her under the willow tree when they were young.

Daniel has no plans to get involved. He’s just there to catalog plants, escape university politics, and take care of the land that saved him more than once. But Rachel’s return—and the growing bond she forms with his teenage daughter—pulls them all into something neither of them expected.

As the summer unfolds, Rachel must decide if the life she built from ambition is worth more than the one that’s quietly blooming in the woods. Sometimes, home isn’t a place—it’s a person. Or two.

From Hollow to Ever After is a slow-burn, heart-healing love story about second chances, found family, and the kind of love that grows when you finally make space for joy.