My Return to the Walter Boys

In the first book, My Life With the Walter Boys, Jackie Howard loses her entire family in a car accident and is sent to live with the Walter family on a ranch in rural Colorado. Katherine, the mother, was a close friend of Jackie’s mother. Jackie craves perfection and organization, and the Walter ranch is the opposite. The Walters have 12 children, all but one of them boys, and Jackie must learn to navigate their chaotic but loving household while processing her grief and adjusting to a completely different way of life. 

The major plot point of the first book is Jackie’s evolving relationship with Cole Walter, the second eldest Walter boy and the one with an edge. Although their meeting is initially antagonistic, their relationship grows complicated as romantic tension builds between them. Jackie also dates Alex, Cole’s younger brother, creating a love triangle that leads to sibling conflict and high tension. Jackie ultimately realizes that her feelings for Cole are stronger, but their timing is never right, and they reunite just as Jackie is about to return to New York for the summer. She plans to confront the grief she left behind, as well as participate in an internship at her father’s former company. 

Jackie and Cole kiss before she returns to New York for the summer, but their relationship remains unresolved. Jackie forms strong bonds with the Walter family, particularly Nathan, who is learning to live with epilepsy, as well as Danny, Cole’s twin and a theater buff, and Isaac and Lee, the Walters’ cousins. By the end of the first book, Jackie begins to see the Walters as her second family; however, she still feels torn between her past in New York and her new life in Colorado. It is this conflict that she begins to resolve in the second book, as she determines that she can, in fact, have two homes.