Beautifully Messy by Noelle Everly

She didn’t fall in love with her husband. She fell in love with his family.

Sydney Wallis has built her life around stability. Married to a man she doesn’t love but tethered to the warmth of his close-knit family, she returns each Christmas to their cabin in Vermont. It’s the only place that’s ever felt like home.
For ten years, she convinces herself she’s fine. Then James arrives, her sister-in-law’s boyfriend. He’s charming, funny, and quietly perceptive in all the ways Mason, her husband, never was. He sees her. Really sees her.
As stolen glances turn into deep conversations and Sydney begins to hope, she discovers she’s pregnant. Her daughter, Anna, becomes her reason to stay. But as Mason grows colder and more controlling, Sydney begins to ask: What does it mean to love someone? To choose yourself? To be a mother who models not self-sacrifice, but self-worth?

Spanning five Christmases, Beautifully Messy is a slow-burn, emotionally charged love story about what happens when a woman finally chooses to stop performing and start living.