Touch of Heartache by Joy Penny

Four friends. Four college grads. Four people figuring out that life doesn’t always turn out the way you expected.

Just weeks before graduating, Lilac Townsend throws away her elementary school teacher job offer in Minnesota to work in Florida at the official resort of her favorite vacation spot, Tildy World. Pushing down all second thoughts, she fills her mind with visions of sunny beaches and Tildy Tapir, the cartoon character who always promised to make her childhood dreams come true. Unfortunately, between a sleazy boss and a community college student in a character suit who manages to fray her last nerve, Lilac soon learns that working behind the scenes at the park is hardly “happily ever after.”

Nolan Gregosky had plans after graduating high school a few years back: go to college, join a fraternity, and make some memories before earning a degree. Instead, tragedy sidelined those dreams, but his job posing for pictures with drooling, snot-nosed kids as Silly Sandgrouse gives him a chance to unload some pent-up energy. When the stunning but uptight new assistant manager at the resort proves a distraction in more ways than one, Nolan realizes it’s up to him to show her what it means to eat, live, and breathe life at the park.

A relationship at this unsteady stage of their lives might not be the brightest idea for either of them, but it’s hard to ignore that tingling sensation whenever the paths of this plush-suit beast and naïve beauty collide.

Trigger warning: Sexual harassment at work.