The Number After You

Hope Hawthorne has spent three years talking to a phone that never answers. After her teenage daughter Lily is killed in a car accident, Hope keeps texting Lily's number-sending updates, memories, and the words she never got to say. It's the only way she knows how to breathe around the empty chair at the table and the silence in their house. What Hope doesn't know is that Lily's number has been reassigned to Sam, a quiet bookstore owner in La Crosse, Wisconsin. At first, Sam means to correct the mistake. But the raw, honest messages from an unknown mother hit a place in his own grief he's been trying to outrun. Instead of replying, he listens. He looks forward to her texts. And slowly, those one-way messages change the way he shows up in his own life. When a twist of fate finally puts Hope and Sam in the same small river town, their worlds begin to overlap-through books, shared loss, and the strange comfort of someone who understands without needing the whole story. As Hope navigates single motherhood, complicated friendships, and the weight of "moving on," she has to decide how much of her heart she's willing to risk on a future that doesn't include the one person she thought she'd never live without. Set against the backdrop of a cozy Midwestern bookstore and a tight-knit community, The Number After You is an emotional, hopeful women's fiction novel about grief, second chances, and the unexpected ways we find our people. A strong pick for book clubs and fans of heartfelt, character-driven stories, this novel offers rich discussion around motherhood, forgiveness, and what it means to keep living when someone you love is gone.