I received this book for free from the Bought, Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Seven Year Itch by Amy Daws Published by Harlequin, Canary Street Press on June 17, 2025
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / General, Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, Fiction / Small Town & Rural
Pages: 384
Format: Audiobook, eBook
Source: Bought, Publisher
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"Deliciously funny and spicy." -Elsie Silver, New York Times bestselling author
Alone and Looking to Bone! Loudmouthed Mountain Man Seeks Fiery Woman to Grow Old With.
I might look like a tall, tattooed, bearded neanderthal...but like an onion, I have layers. Swipe right if you like a proud cat daddy who catches feelings after direct eye contact.All I wanted was a casual plus-one to my brother's destination wedding, but those idiots on my family tree hacked my dating profile and sabotaged my quest for the perfect weekend fling. Now I'm stuck on a tropical vacation with only my hand to keep me company.
Until I’m forced to share a room with the bane of my existence: my sister-in-law’s best friend.
Dakota has hated me for the past seven years. I wasn’t losing much sleep over her screaming rants because she was some other guy’s problem. Or she was, until she got divorced.
Being stuck in paradise with a woman who loathes your very existence doesn't sound hot, but after an unexpected moment in our shared palapa, she starts screaming at me in a different way.
What happens in paradise stays in paradise. That is, until Dakota shows up on my mountain with a proposition: be her wingman to help her regain her pre-divorce confidence.
Suddenly, Dakota’s not just the person I love to fight with. She’s the woman I want everything with.
Perfect for fans of:
- Enemies to Lovers
- Small Town Romance / Vacation Romances
- Quirky Animals
- Meddling family
- Meghan Quinn and Tessa Bailey
If you’re in the mood for a romance that brings the giggles before the goosebumps, Seven Year Itch by Amy Daws hits that sweet spot. This charming slow-burn romcom lures you in with its irresistible humor and relatable heartache before letting the sparks fly—quite literally—in the latter half.
Check out the excerpt below and my review that follows.
Prologue
ALONE AND LOOKING TO BONE!
LOUDMOUTHED MOUNTAIN MAN SEEKS FIERY
FEMALE TO STEAM UP HIS LOG CABIN
Calder, 35 years old
Fletcher Mountain University
Full-time cat daddy with a side-hustle in screwing and nailing
14 miles away
Height: 6’3″ at the doctor, 6’5″ at the bar
Eyes: Blue and Full of Feelings
Body: Toned and overly inked to conceal my real personality
Personality: My mom says I’m great
Size: Not as big as my brother Luke’s but honorable mention
What I do on a typical day: Mountainside strolls with my cat strapped to my chest.
Self-summary:
I might be tall, tattooed, bearded, and all the classic things one might look for in a rugged mountain man . . . but like an onion plucked from the soil, you must peel back the dirty layers to see the moist inner belly that shows my true essence.
I’m not a “go with the flow” kind of guy. I catch feelings with direct eye contact. If you don’t text me back within an hour, I’ll probably cry a little before showing up to your house to see if you’re cheating on me.
I once had a girl hold the door open for me, and afterward I asked her, “What are we?”
The other day, a bartender poured me the wrong beer and let me drink it for free . . . it was a weird way for him to propose, but I said yes.
If you like the taste of my potent onion, swipe right and let’s giggle and make some soup together.
Chapter 1
CAT DADDY
Calder
“What the actual fuck,” I state out loud, and my cat, Milkshake, lets out a high-pitched meow from where she sits on my naked chest. I sit up, clutching her black-and-white fur to me for comfort as I use my free hand to scroll through my Tinder account. “Have I been hacked?”My eyes scan over the contents of my dating profile, knowing damn well I didn’t write a single word of this. Catch feelings with direct eye contact? I don’t catch feelings. I catch boners with a light breeze. I catch ladies’ attention with my tattoos and muscles.
Feelings? Fuck feelings!
“Can Tinder profiles get hacked?” I ask Milkshake who tips her head up to me and drags her sandpaper tongue over my beard. “Who gives a fuck about someone’s dating life enough to mess with their profiles? There has to be way cooler things to hack.”
I quickly check my other hookup apps that I keep armed and ready at all times and see the same long-term relationship bullshit spewing out of every one of them. Make some soup together? My God. This is the complete opposite of what I look for in these apps. I’m very clear about that. Who the hell did this?
I reread the penis-size line, and my eyes narrow. “Fucking Luke,” I growl and stand up from the sofa to stomp across the knotty pine flooring of my small cabin. I glance out the window that faces uphill to see if his truck is here as I drop a soft kiss to my cat’s ear. “Someone’s gonna die today,” I coo in a saccharine voice to my girl.
Without putting a shirt on, I throw the baby carrier on my chest and stuff Milkshake inside. That was the only part of the hacked profile that was true, but dammit, little fuzz loves being outside. And there’s way too much wildlife around here to let her run free. So when my future sister-in-law, Trista, gave me a cat carrier to help Milkshake enjoy the great outdoors safely, that meant I turned into a big, tatted mountain man who wears a cat more often than not.
Come at me.
Fuzz gets to enjoy the fresh air and mountain scenery, and I get to sleep at night, not worrying she’s going to get eaten by the coyotes that roam the dense forest surrounding us.
Milkshake secure, I storm out in the bristly early March temperatures, the cool air doing its best to cool down my fiery temper as I make my way to Luke’s to tear him a new asshole, but an errant thought stops me in my tracks. I pivot to look downhill at the cabin on the other side of my place. Maybe the Luke dick-size comparison on my profile was a diversion to get me off my older brother Wyatt’s trail. I certainly have payback coming from Wyatt after posting a Help Wanted ad for him last year at the local bar when he was looking for a baby mama.
But I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.
The fucker is probably tucked inside his architecturally obnoxious cabin cuddling his fiancée and their nearly three-month-old daughter, Stevie, in front of his stone fireplace, watching the snow melt outside the window.
Gives me the ick.
My brother went from never wanting a wife so much that he was looking for a surrogate to have a baby for him to now preparing to fly us all to Mexico so we can watch him marry his incubator-turned-fiancée in a couple of weeks.
It’s enough to make a guy puke.
Not that I dislike Trista. She’s cool, and I’m low-key obsessed with my niece that she gave birth to a few months ago. The two of them are fine additions to Fletcher Mountain along with the pick-and-mix assortment of farm animals that keep showing up in the red barn located down the drive.
But my two brothers and I made a pact nearly a decade ago: us three and this mountain. No one else.
Now we have a soon-to-be wife for Wyatt, a baby niece who has us all wrapped around her finger, eighteen random animals including a horse with a tongue deformity, and probably a fucking partridge in a pear tree somewhere in that barn.
Wyatt is a sellout.
My eyes shift to movement in the distance, and I see Trista emerge from the Dutch doors of the barn. She has a baby carrier strapped to her chest, and I decide to let Wyatt live for a few more minutes while I investigate.
Feeling Milkshake purr against my chest, I beeline straight to the barn, my boots crunching over melted snow as I intercept Trista walking back up toward her and Wyatt’s cabin.
“What do you know?” I bark, my eyes narrowing on my brother’s woman.
Trista smiles as she glances down at my pussy. “I knew Milkshake would love that cat carrier, for one.”
I dig my calloused fingers into Milkshake’s cheek, and her purr quickens as she nuzzles into my chest. “This isn’t about my cat, and you know it.”
Trista’s smile drops, and she hits me with a scolding look. “Calder, it’s barely nine in the morning. I had this feral little animal on my tits four times last night. You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”
“My dating profiles have all been fucked with, and I want to know who did it. My guess is your soon-to-be husband.”
“What does it say?” she asks, her eyes narrowing curiously.
I pull my phone out of my pocket to show her the proof, and her face lights up as laughter bubbles out of her. “This definitely looks like payback from Wyatt.”
“That’s what I thought,” I grind out as I turn toward my brother’s house. He must pay for his crime. “Sorry, Stevie. Your dad is going to be out of commission for a while.”
“Although you know who else it could have been . . .” Trista’s voice stops me in my tracks, and I turn on my heel with a frown as she adds, “Your niece.”
“Stevie’s too damn young to be on Tinder,” I exclaim, my eyes dropping down to the mound of chestnut curls sticking out from her little stocking cap. Her hair is wild and unruly just like Trista’s.
“Not this niece, you moron,” Trista bites back a bit too comfortably. She’s definitely not the type of sister-in-law you can fuck with. She puts me and my brother Luke in our place whenever the mood strikes her. I kind of love that about her.
She pats her daughter’s back and adds, “I’m talking about Everly.”
My brows furrow. “Everly is at college in Ireland.”
“They have the internet there, Calder.”
My mind races with this new possibility I hadn’t considered. How did my nineteen-year-old niece hack my dating profiles? In fairness, my password might be easy to guess. Milkshake1234 isn’t exactly a high-security option. And Everly was the one with the idea to do the baby mama Help Wanted ad for Wyatt last year when he was looking for a surrogate. I just helped her jazz it up a bit.
I shake my head and refocus. “But why would she sabotage my dating profiles?”
“Maybe she wants you to find a nice girl to bring to the wedding, not some rando from Tinder? I mean . . . we all have to hang with whoever you and Luke bring to this villa we’re staying at in Mexico. Not to mention Stevie will be there, your mother, and your eight-year-old nephew, Ethan. A random Tinder hookup doesn’t sound super family-friendly.”
“Trust me, whoever I find won’t be there for the family vibes.” I waggle my brows suggestively.
Trista rolls her eyes and rubs Stevie’s bottom. “Can you not speak that way in front of my daughter, please?”
“My daughter doesn’t mind one bit.” I match Trista’s protective stance with my own fur baby. I move closer to lean in and whisper into my sleeping niece’s ear. “It’s best you learn young, lil Stevemeister, that your uncle Calder is a stallion.”
Trista groans and makes her way up toward their house. “Calder, I don’t know who messed with your profiles, but if you have to go to Tinder to find someone to bring to our wedding, maybe you don’t really need to bring anyone at all.”
My eyes narrow on my retreating future sister-in-law. She might have a point about Tinder not being the right place for me to find a date for a destination wedding. But she’s wrong about me not bringing a date. Luke already has his plus-one lined up, and our oldest brother Max down in Boulder has been wifed up for years. Wyatt will be busy being a groom. If I don’t bring a plus-one, that means I’ll be my mother’s date, and as much as I love my dear mother . . . I can’t stomach the idea of dancing with her or my niece all night long. I need to find someone to bring with me on this damn trip.
I turn and gaze at the tiny mountain town that rests at the bottom of our long and winding gravel lane. Perhaps Tinder is casting too wide a net. Maybe it’s time to look a bit closer to home. Jamestown ain’t much to look at. It’s a little hamlet of Boulder—an isolated and somewhat dilapidated sanctuary for weirdos who want to stay weird. It’s full of loners. Trailblazers. People who don’t want to be found and don’t mind a bit of inconvenience—be that limited grocery supplies, weather that snows us in for a week, or cell service that goes in and out. Jamestown is our sanctuary. And it’s the place Wyatt, Luke, and I have called home for over a decade now.
Unfortunately, the population doesn’t even hit three hundred souls, so the pickings are slim. My brothers and I learned that quickly when we first moved out here. Things ended real messy back then, and the three of us made a pact to not test the waters in Jamestown ever again . . . but surely enough time has passed now. I mean hell, Wyatt’s on his way to getting married anyways. Maybe it’s time to shop local again.
Excerpted from SEVEN YEAR ITCH by Amy Daws. Copyright © 2025 by Amy Daws. Published by Canary Street Press, an imprint of HarperCollins.
My Thoughts:
Amy Daws’ Seven Year Itch is the kind of slow-burn romcom that surprises you—not just with its delayed steam, but with its emotional sincerity and playful charm. From laugh-out-loud moments to heart-squeezing introspection, the story centers on a custom t-shirt shop owner, Dakota, rediscovering herself after years of emotional autopilot in a marriage that wasn’t right for her. Dakota’s arc is one of reclaiming joy, passion, and honesty—especially with herself.
Her enemy-turned-romantic counterpart is construction worker Calder, and he undergoes a more subtle but equally meaningful transformation. He shifts from emotionally guarded to someone more open, more grounded, and ready to show up in the ways that count. His evolution isn’t about sweeping gestures—it’s about learning to be present, vulnerable, and real.
But what makes their dynamic so compelling is what’s left unsaid. These two talk—a lot. They banter, they tease, they even share some tender truths. But when it comes to the emotional heavy lifting—the heartache, the fears, the deep-seated truths—they circle the edges without fully diving in. That tension and avoidance, adds an extra layer of realism to their arc: love doesn’t just require communication, it requires courageous communication.
There is a bit of drag in the middle—a stretch where the emotional wheels spin without quite gaining traction—but it mirrors the characters’ own struggles with inertia and emotional bottlenecks. Once the story hits its stride, though, the payoff is rich, satisfying, and well worth the wait.
I purchased the audiobook on Audible, and narrators Teddy Hamilton and Erin Mallon do a fantastic job of weaving in and out of each character’s point of view. They blend seamlessly like the characters are just having a regular conversation.
I give SEVEN YEAR ITCH a 4.5 out of 5. Amy Daws delivers a cast of quirky, lovable characters and dialogue that dances between snarky and sincere. The first half leans heavily into the emotional build-up, with all the awkward dates, inner turmoil, and witty banter you’d expect from a romance done right. But once the tension snaps? Let’s just say things heat up in a way that’s well worth the wait. I highly recommend this book and will look for more from this author.
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About AMY DAWS
National bestselling author Amy Daws writes spicy love stories that take place in America, as well as across the pond. When Amy is not writing, she’s likely making charcuterie boards from her home in South Dakota, where she lives with her daughter and husband.
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