Marina Adair

Marina Adair creates community-centered love stories about complicated relatives and characters building families outside conventional plans. Kensington’s 2020 release RomeAntically Challenged opens the When in Rome series. It follows physician Anh Nhi Walsh after a broken engagement brings her to Rome, Rhode Island, where she shares a house with firefighter and single father Emmitt Bradley. Anh’s experience as a Korean adoptee informs her search for belonging, while Emmitt must reconsider how he makes decisions with his teenage daughter. Their household gradually becomes the setting for both romantic tension and a broader argument about chosen family. Adair also wrote the St. Helena Vineyard, Sugar, and Destiny Bay series, often returning to close-knit places where private choices become community business. The publisher styles the novel’s title as ROMeANTICALLY CHALLENGED, emphasizing its setting through capitalization. The book pairs comedy with adoption, grief, parenting, and the difficulty of recognizing home when an expected future has disappeared.