Southern by Design by Grace Helena Walz

“I felt like I was spending the summer in Charleston.”

Review by AnnaScott Cross

Sweet Magnolias meets Fixer Upper in this delightfully refreshing debut about a woman bravely chasing her dreams, building a life on her own terms, and maybe even discovering a second chance at love.

Magnolia “Mack” Bishop is staring down the barrel at single motherhood–thanks to an unsolicited personal picture her husband texted another woman that quickly went viral among every mom group in town. But she’s determined to not let it distract her from the professional victory she’s inches away securing Charleston’s prestigious Historic Preservation Design Fellowship, the apple of every local designer’s eye.

But when the final house tour is undone by a host of calamities, Mack’s shot at the fellowship goes up in flames. Smelling blood in the water, Mack’s mother, the original Magnolia Bishop, breezes in with a project lead–strings attached. If there’s one thing Magnolia lives for, aside from maintaining her station atop the Southern social ladder, it’s to control Mack’s life . . . and that includes keeping the identity of the absentee father Mack never knew in the shadows.

While working for her mother is the professional equivalent of moving into one’s parent’s basement, Mack spots an opportunity to make it her own when a television network puts a call out for local designers. Pitching the home renovation TV pilot of her dreams–one with a historic preservation twist–might just be the way to finally prove herself. Still, she’ll have to do it covertly to avoid her mother’s interference.

Just when Mack finds her professional footing, at home she spots an impossibly familiar figure unloading his moving truck into the newly sold house next door. She is furious, floored, and regrettably flustered because Lincoln Kelly is the one who got away. Fifteen years earlier he was a summer romance she inadvertently fell in love with, and when he left, following his dreams to New York, Mack was broken-hearted.

Filled with characters who could step off the page and a reminder that nothing worth saving is beyond repair, this charming and delightful debut novel will resonate with readers of Southern women’s fiction by Mary Kay Andrews and Kristy Woodson Harvey.

This book was an absolute delight. The plot surrounding a TV show following an interior designer who remodels historic homes in Charleston, SC, is basically a combination of all of my favorite things. Walz made the atmosphere come alive, so that even when I was reading it at home in the winter, I felt like I was spending the summer in Charleston.

I loved all of the characters, and their relationships with each other were so wholesome and sweet (except the ones that weren’t, but they served their purpose well). The character development was excellent, and the plot twist was very well executed. As invested as I was in the plot and seeing how it ended, I hated to finish and immediately missed Charleston and all of the characters.

Overall, my only complaint is that the cause for divorce (spoiler in the content disclaimers below) was a bit more detailed than I needed, especially since the rest of the book was quite clean.

Content Ratings:

3-Mild action (common injuries with some details).

4. Romance with a bit more moderate content (fade to black/no sex on the page/closed-door romance).

4. Frequent and mild cursing (commonplace h*lls, sh*ts, and d*mns” paired with British curse words like “Bloody”, etc.). 

Content Notices:

Themes of infidelity; the husband sends an unsolicited picture that was a bit too detailed for my taste. It is implied that two of the characters slept together in college, but it’s very vague and there are no details. In addition, one of the side characters is gay, but it is only mentioned in passing and doesn’t play a prominent role in the story.

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