Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

Ashley Manley’s The Difference Between follows Reese Conway, a forty-year-old private equity partner in Chicago who has spent years measuring her life by goals she set as a teenager. When her mother undergoes brain surgery in North Carolina on the same day Reese presents the biggest deal of her career, she handles hospital updates while delivering the pitch. Her managing partner orders a three-month sabbatical, sending Reese back to the small town of Fontain with instructions to find something she enjoys outside the office. Reese decides to use the break to pursue motherhood, approaching the plan with the same determination she brings to business. Then Gavin Nickels, a thirty-year-old local she remembers teaching to read as a child, keeps finding reasons to step into the future Reese has already planned.

Ashley Manley’s The Difference Between is the kind of romance built around two people who each show real individuality right from the outset. You can tell a lot about Reese by what happens when somebody steps into her plans. Her goal-driven outlook gives her an instantly recognizable way of moving through the world. Gavin ignores her mother’s no-visitors sign to mow the lawn, so Reese heads toward him in office clothes with pumps on her feet. That scene fits her perfectly. Gavin brings an easy teasing quality to the romance, giving their chemistry plenty of sizzle. Their mahjong date at a barbecue restaurant captures how naturally that attraction plays between them. Fontain gets its own beautiful treatment, with vineyard rows beneath autumn sun leading into Hot Sand’s glass studio beside two-thousand-degree furnaces. Readers looking for age-gap romance with distinctive leads in a beautifully realized space are in for a treat. Very highly recommended.