…You have many large chunks of pure dialogue, especially in the first half. It’s usually very good dialogue. Crisp and relevant. But with so little narrative mixed in to show us what your characters are doing or feeling, I felt like I was listening to your characters behind a screen. I want to see their movements and expressions. I’d suggest not letting the dialogue run on for more than three or four exchanges without working in some kind of narrative. Especially something visual that will help us see frustration, joy, etc.

Speaking of visual, you don’t describe your main characters (Reagan and Mere) until about 25 pages in. Brett’s was also delayed. In some cases (David), you never show them to us at all. In other places (the new girlfriends at school), they get an immediate and lovely little description worked in seamlessly. I’d recommend doing the same for your main characters early on…

PLOT
And now the general trajectory of the story. It’s wonderful at first. Your sentence structures are varied and engaging with a lovely cadence. You work in back info beautifully. Your scenes are fresh and meaningful. New move. New job. Fresh start. Boy meets girl. You set everything up. The plot moves forward. Then about chapter ten or twelve you hit quicksand. The plot falters. Paragraphs and dialogue get cumbersome and wordy. It just stops going anywhere. And the main reason? There’s no conflict. Nothing going on that propels the story forward or prompts a reader to keep reading.

Before I go on, a quick review of story structure. A plot should look like this suspension bridge:

It breaks your plot into three main ACTs. The first ACT is the buildup, which you have accomplished quite nicely. Establish characters and setting. Boy meets girl. Then something monumental needs to happen at the first pylon that will initiate the problem or conflict that you will spend all of ACT II intensifying little by little. Then at the second pylon, something monumental happens once again that your readers think your characters can never recover from. ACT III is generally they high action (high emotion in romance) sequence/final climax that eventually reaches resolution. The story then fades out with a final bit of cleanup, and viola. Your readers, close the back cover, sigh happily, and start searching up your other books.

You reach the first pylon and nothing happens. By chapter 10 or 12, it’s long overdue…and you flounder, spin, and sink.

In chapter 7, Reagan feels her first attraction for Brett. That is definitely a structural high point in romance, but it needs to be accompanied by some kind of conflict to keep it interesting. Brett and Reagan just ARE together. They’re not moving. They’re not fighting. They’re not flirting. I did see a ray of hope for a lovely misunderstanding when Reagan thinks Brett is interested in Maggie. You could run with that. You could keep the interaction coming, keep the attraction coming. They’re both just stewing, pretending, and not attaining any satisfaction because they keep missing each other. It would have to culminate in her almost leaving town, or some blowout with Jared in which Brett comes to the rescue, or some other large something that finally reveals to both Reagan and Brett that they’re made for each other.

You also introduce a theme of religious change in chapter 8, which could be a secondary high point/secondary plot, but it never really develops.

Because the story never really hits any high points, it starts to go downhill quickly. Scenes rehash old territory and start to feel pointless. Introducing a problem, whatever you chose to make it, will give your entire plot purpose again. It will give your characters much more depth. (See below.) And it will make moving forward so much easier. So…I strongly suggest you work out a framework before you start cutting text or revising text or moving forward with more.

Start by brainstorming a list of things that could possibly happen in your story. What could devastate a character? What could make them overjoyed? What could break your story? What could drive one character away? What could bring them together? What could cause emotional havoc? What could cause ridiculous misunderstandings? Etc, etc, etc. Just start listing.

After you have 12 or 15 plot points, start labeling them. Which is the most intense. Which is the next intense. Start sorting. Pick. Choose. Start working them into a sequence. And THEN, once you’re seeing a roadmap, start adjusting your text.

CHARACTERS
Reagan and Brett have a lot of potential, but right now, both are kind of flat. Again, this is mostly because they’re jogging in place without any conflict to spur them on.

Ida’s great!

Mere is also a little flat. She’s not primary, but it’s hugely emotional for a child to lose her father. You could find umpteen ways to show facets of this. Memories. Offhand comments. Things said to her friends.

Jared will need his own plotline that runs parallel and finally connects to Reagan’s, most likely in the climactic final ACT. Right now, he’s the worst character, because he’s really spinning in circles. Every scene starts to feel the same—he’s trying to get on his feet, he’s walking the dog, he’s grumbling about his dad, about his family, about Reagan, but never really doing much. Brainstorm some more unique actions he can take.

SETTING
Lonewild is beautiful. I can totally see it. I’m not getting nearly that kind of visual on the town. Use that same beautiful, light-handed description to paint Main Street, the waterfront, the shops…

Finally, your prose—which is so gorgeous at first—gets wordy and repetitive from about halfway on. (Which makes sense. The first half gets attention every time you do a read-through. And the last half falters when the plot stagnates.) When you see large paragraphs, they probably need to be trimmed. Read them aloud. Cut out sentences that are saying the same thing. You have crisp and streamlined prose in the beginning, which proves you can do this and do it well. I’m entirely certain it will take off once you work out your plot and the whole thing moves forward again.

In conclusion, you have a wonderful, beautiful gift for prose. Your story starts out intriguing. Everything is in place for a killer story. You just need to map out the highs and lows that will move everything forward and hold off that final happily-ever-after until the end. You can do this!