You'll Love It Here

The novel opens with a fire investigation report for Valleyview Apartments, a sixteen-unit building in Calgary, noting that conflict among residents may be relevant to the blaze. The narrative flashes back six weeks to Mona Bucket, a thirty-one-year-old marketing manager at Westmore Communications who has spent her adult life building a career to escape a childhood shaped by her father's alcohol addiction. She lives in Valleyview, which she considers a temporary stop, and her world is unraveling.

During a client meeting, a joke about AA meetings triggers painful memories of her father's drinking. Mona snaps at the client and sheds a tear on his pen. Her boss, Carolyne, places her on forced leave framed as a grief break, since Mona's father died three months earlier and she never took bereavement time. That evening, she goes drinking with her colleagues Corbin, Lisa, and Olivia, all competing for the same promotion, and lies about the reason for her leave. She ends the night at Corner Coffee & Food, the neighboring diner, where owner Sami Zeker serves her cheese fries. Stumbling home drunk, she vandalizes the lobby, breaking a vase of flowers Sami's family had given the landlady Irene and spilling water into an electrical outlet, triggering a fire alarm.

The evacuation forces Mona onto the lawn alongside neighbors she has ignored for five years. Irene, the elderly landlady, falls in the stairwell and breaks her ankle. Mona meets Carmen Thurston, a gruff older man; Jane Brando, an eccentrically dressed woman in the adjacent unit; and Norman "Norm" Olivers, a recluse from the ground floor. Sami brings coffee and pastries for the displaced residents. The lobby camera failed to record, so there is no evidence of Mona's vandalism. She volunteers to care for Irene's dachshund, Ernest, to ease her guilt.

Sami visits to deliver Ernest's supplies and spots the broken vase in Mona's sink. She confesses, and he agrees to keep her secret. They share Ernest's care daily, a routine that becomes the foundation of their friendship. Mona also finds a Pez dispenser in her purse, triggering a painful memory: Her father used to give her Pez dispensers as apologies after each episode of drinking. Her leave stretches into anxious days as she discovers her headshot removed from the firm's website and her projects reassigned. Attempts to discuss her father's death with her mother go nowhere; her mother channels her grief into public combativeness.

At the hospital, Mona meets Lana Winston, Irene's niece and a commercial realtor who privately reveals her plan to sell Valleyview. Lana proposes a deal: If Mona serves as temporary superintendent and discreetly prepares the building for sale without telling Irene or the tenants, Lana will secure her affordable housing in a new building. Mona negotiates further, asking Lana to commit to a pitch meeting at Westmore so Mona can return from leave with a major client and secure her promotion. Lana agrees, and Mona tells herself the sale is inevitable given Irene's finances and the neighborhood's gentrification.

Mona catalogs tenant files, schedules inspections, and photographs the property. Jane fled a controlling marriage and moved to Calgary with nothing; Irene lowered her rent so she could stay. Jane's underwear also keeps vanishing from the laundry room, an unsettling mystery. When Mona brings Norm lunch after a botched inspection, she recognizes him as a Westmore IT employee she once met and forgot. His mother recently died, and their shared grief creates a bond. Carmen refuses the inspection, and Mona discovers he runs a secret resale business from his apartment. Carmen reveals he saw Mona dump the broken vase, and they reach a mutual-discretion pact. He confides that he is in recovery from alcohol addiction and has a teenage daughter he can see only once a month. The parallels to Mona's father unsettle her.

Mona and Sami grow closer through dog exchanges, walks, and dinners at the diner with Sami and his father, Abu. Sami attended culinary school and worked as a sous chef but returned to the family diner after Abu had a heart attack. He has organized a petition to slow neighborhood redevelopment. Mona encourages him to add his Persian fusion dishes to the menu. When Sami nearly kisses her one evening, she pulls away, knowing her secret about the sale would devastate him.

As Lana's deadline approaches, Mona stages a fake town hall at the diner to lure tenants out so Lana can show the building to prospective buyers. That evening, Mona and Sami kiss for the first time. Norm later warns her that Olivia has been requesting accounts from Mona's portfolio by citing fabricated errors and that Corbin is filing complaints; messages on the company server confirm their coordination.

Lana emails announcing an offer from Northern Property Management, the large developer Sami despises, which plans to demolish Valleyview and build a condo tower. Mona proposes an alternative plan to let Irene keep the building, but Irene has already signed. Mona rallies tenants and local business owners to oppose the permits at a city development meeting, but the effort fails. She confronts Olivia, Corbin, and Lisa, informing them she knows about the sabotage. Lana retaliates by publicly revealing Mona's role in preparing the sale. The tenants are devastated. Sami walks away. At that moment, sirens sound: Smoke rises from Valleyview.

A fire has broken out from a faulty dryer whose cracked vent sucked in small garments for months, including Jane's missing underwear, solving the mystery. The building is declared uninhabitable. Rebuffed by everyone, Mona retreats to her mother's house, the childhood home she spent her adult life trying to escape.

After days of isolation, Mona tells her mother the truth about the leave, her grief, and how her father's addiction drove her relentless need for control. Her mother listens, cries with her, and they begin repairing their relationship. Mona opens a box her father gave her during their last meeting. Inside are dozens of Pez dispensers representing years of undelivered apologies and photographs spanning her life, including milestones from the years she refused to see him. She visits his grave, speaks to him, and leaves the Yoshi Pez dispenser on his headstone. She decides to quit marketing, recognizing she has been chasing success to outrun shame.

Using old photographs of the building's history from Irene, Mona creates a GoFundMe campaign to fund repairs. A vintage photo of young Abu at the diner counter goes viral, drawing broad support. Mona works with Irene to pressure the insurance company into a fair settlement and raises corporate donations to close the gap.

Two months after the fire, Mona returns with enough money to repair Valleyview. She has taken a job at a heritage society doing marketing for building restoration. Sami's diner now features his fusion dishes and is thriving. Mona tells him everything between them was real; he says he does not want a world without her. They agree to try again. Four months later, the tenants celebrate the upcoming completion of repairs. Jane is in design school, Carmen is reconnecting with his daughter, and Norm is socializing again. Mona looks through the diner window at Valleyview, soot-stained and flanked by construction fences, and reflects that plans do not hold a person at the end of the day, but people do. She is home.