Breakaway Books

Authored by Annabel Monaghan; Published May 2026; Romance

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

Spend a few days of your summer yachting with Dolly All The Time. It’s a delightful fake dating romance that’ll make you run to the nearest harbor before the summer is out.

Dolly All The Time follows the titular Dolly through a summer at Whitfield, an idyllic seaside town—a vacation she did not plan on having. But when her father’s house is partially destroyed by a fire, and her son’s social life goes up in smoke, Dolly makes the executive decision to move to Whitfield for the summer and help her dad out. While she’s there, she is recruited into a fake dating scheme by the scion of a rich family, Stewart, who desperately needs to convince his parents that he has a social life. Dolly is hesitant, but she needs the money. I think we can all predict where the novel goes from there!

Like all the romances I adore, a big part of this novel is addressing Dolly’s internal problems, i.e. her compulsive need to take care of everything herself and her inability to ask for help. While that flaw was glaringly obvious to me within the first few pages, I also couldn’t help but enjoy Dolly’s sheer competence as a single working mom. Simultaneously able to keep track of the needs of her child, her father, her home, and her jobs, I definitely experienced the vicarious thrill of her incredible productivity as jumps from task to task. Should she have to do that? No, and I imagine that being swept off her feet by an exorbitantly rich man would help with that. But first, she has to acknowledge how much of her identity she’s put into being the one who can solve everything. 

Stewart has issues of his own to get over–his desperation to be CEO of his family company borders on obsession, and it’s not helping his panic attacks. I love a hero who needs to go to therapy, and–shock of all shocks–actually does the work that therapy involves. He and Dolly may not have the most realistic mental health journeys (would that make for a good romance?), but they’re definitely not completely fanciful either. Both of them have to work and make slow progress in changing themselves. Stewart’s easy rapport with Dolly’s son seems a little less realistic, but it certainly makes him into a more appealing romantic interest. Well, along with his boatloads of money (and literal boats that he owns) that can be thrown at the very real financial troubles Dolly’s family is having. Side note: Stewart’s money also buys Dolly a lot of very nice clothing in a makeover scene that will make even the least fashion-forward reader green with envy.

Dolly All the Time is a very sweet piece of escapism. Grab it before the summer’s over.