What Remains of Grace - Hardcover

by Jennifer Hardman (Author)

She came home for her sister's funeral and found a failing bakery, a grieving teenager, a family legacy in trouble, and a slow-burn romance she never saw coming.

When construction manager Jenna Hart receives the call that her sister, Grace, has died suddenly from complications of a heart condition, the life Jenna built in Atlanta collapses. Ten years earlier, their brother's death fractured the family, and Jenna fled Florida, leaving Grace to shoulder every responsibility she could not face. Now Grace is gone as well, and returning to Tarpon Springs forces Jenna to confront the consequences of the decade she spent running from her past.

The Blue Cypress Bakery still smells of sugar and coffee, but it is barely staying afloat. The house on Athens Street is sinking into disrepair. Most difficult of all, Grace's daughter Emmie is grieving deeply and unsure whether Jenna has earned the right to remain in her life. Jenna plans to settle the estate quickly and leave, but stepping back into Grace's world places her in the roles she abandoned. Caretaker. Sister. The only adult Emmie can rely on.

With the help of Cole Bennett, the sharp-eyed contractor renovating the bakery, Jenna begins to repair both buildings and the fractured family inside them. Progress stalls when Grace's estranged husband files a partition action that demands the forced sale of the house and the bakery. Losing the property would take Emmie's home, her stability, and the last tangible pieces of Grace. Jenna must fight a legal battle she is emotionally unprepared for, rebuild the life she once ran from, and face the version of herself she tried to bury ten years earlier before grief takes something from her again.

What Remains of Grace blends emotional reinvention, small-town tension, slow-burn romance, and the fierce bonds of inherited and chosen family. At its center, it explores how we rebuild after loss, what we owe the people we love, and the complicated inheritance of grief and guardianship.