Dolly All the Time is set in the fictional seaside town of Whitfield, Rhode Island. The Whitfield family are the big, rich family in town and yes, the town is named after one of them. Stewart is the eldest son and desperate to prove to his family that he can be the new CEO and have a successful romantic life. As it is a family business, this is an important consideration for the board (made up primarily of family). So he pays Dolly to be his pretend girlfriend for the summer.
Dolly is a single mom of a 13-year-old boy, Gus. Her dad lives in Whitfield and she’s there for the summer to help out. As a family, they only just scrape by financially and they’ve just found out that the roof of the family home needs to be replaced or the place will be condemned. That’s why Dolly says yes to this crazy scheme that Stewart proposes.
Stewart and Dolly, despite having the same hometown, only met for the first time that summer. Dolly changed Stewart’s car tyre for him when he was stranded without a phone to call for help. He had no idea how to change his own tyre, which Dolly ribs him for, shamelessly – which delighted me.
In fact, that is probably my favourite part of Dolly All the Time: the conversations that Stewart and Dolly have. There’s teasing and flirting and some big emotionally brave moments. There’s honesty and vulnerability and it’s wonderful to read. So often I’d kick my feet happily or giggle out loud to myself in glee while reading. Usually I’m physically pretty still when I read, so this is noteworthy.
Stewart is rich, hot, a bit inept with ‘normal’ things and desperate to prove himself capable as CEO, but that’s not going to make him a swoonworthy romantic lead. The key to Stewart’s charm is that with Dolly, he seems to be trying out his emotions for the first time since a medical situation in his family when he was a teen. From that point on, he just shut down his emotions and focused only on work.
With Dolly, he slowly lets his guard down and invites her in, allowing his vulnerabilities to show. This growth is particularly obvious in how he learns to communicate through touch, especially with Dolly (in a loving way, not a sexual way). He holds her hand (side note: the scene where Dolly shows him the best way to hold hands is very romantic), he touches her back, he puts his arm around her when they’re sitting next to each other. These are not things that he has done with other girlfriends (not that there have been many). His increasing ease with touch is a physical manifestation of his emotions blossoming.
Dolly’s primary growth points are accepting help and learning to be vulnerable again after Gus’s dad did her dirty. I adored how self-sufficient Dolly is, but also the relief of being able to lean on someone else for a change. And it doesn’t hurt that with Stewart, her money problems belong in the past. I’m not ashamed to admit that the fantasy of my money worries evaporating is a compelling one.
I’m deeply skeptical of children in romance novels as I don’t have great luck with believable portrayals of children in romance. So often I get duds. This one was not that at all. Gus is an important character and immersed as we are in Dolly’s POV, we get to see first-hand what it is like to try and parent a 13-year-old who is navigating a tough time. Gus meets Stewart early on in the book and while Dolly is open with Gus that this is all pretend, Gus sees them falling in love. Gus and Stewart form their own bond (separate from Dolly, with Dolly’s blessing) and that connection remains intact as we hit the bleak moment. I really appreciated that Gus was not thrown into turmoil by the bleak moment. I think this was really well done.
So that bleak moment. It’s a doozie and it’s the reason that I had a grumble with the ending.
I needed more time to forgive relevant parties before I could fully buy the HEA. I will say that there is a lot of important growth that happens during that bleak moment for pretty much every single character in the book. Necessary growth, good growth, empowering growth, but wow, did it hurt to read.
With a bit of distance (and having read a couple of the author’s other books now, too) I can see how her books span the gap between women’s fiction and romance. Yes, there is a HEA, but the tremendous amount of growth that’s required at that stage of the plot for that HEA to happen feels more like a women’s fiction plot than a romance one. It’s not one moment of clarity that’s required for the HEA to happen, it’s months of emotional labour for many characters for that HEA to happen. Dolly All The Time really made me and the characters work for the HEA.
Just as sometimes children in romance novels come across as wooden or not believable, I sometimes have similar gripes with the heroine’s friendships. I’m frustrated by romance novels that place the heroine in less-than-ideal friendships to allow the romantic connection to be the only whole-hearted one in the story. That is not the case with Dolly All the Time: Naomi, Dolly’s best friend, is FANTASTIC. She’s loyal, supportive, encouraging and deeply committed to Dolly’s happiness and growth. It is the kind of friendship that lasts decades and sustains life. Dolly deserves to have a friend like that, no matter what is in the cards romance-wise.
I was so happily swept away by the romance of this book. Stewart and Dolly fall so deeply in love and reading about it made my own world (and its attendant troubles) completely disappear. So enamoured of this book was I that I managed to read it in a day despite needing to run errands and parent my toddler. I MADE time to read (with the help of my village). I strongly recommend this book to the Bitchery. While it is being marketed as a summer read, I think that undersells the power of it. In my little town in South Africa, we are enjoying a bright, chill autumn with leaves just starting to turn, but for the duration of this book, I enjoyed a Rhode Island summer with boat trips and lobster tails and deep, abiding love.
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