Butter Sculptors of Iowa
A State Fair Romance

About this book:

In the frostbitten heart of the Iowa State Fair, the Agriculture Building's glass-walled coolers host the hottest rivalry in the Midwest. Clara Vance has spent three years watching Oliver Thorne hoist the Blue Ribbon, his family's creamery money and effortless charm smoothing his path while she fights to save her family's farm with nothing but grit, anatomical precision, and a 450-pound block of unsalted butter. This year, her prize bull from 1854 is poised to dethrone his picture-perfect Holstein—until a hairline fracture in Oliver's masterpiece forces a choice between sweet sabotage and an unthinkable truce.

As the August heatwave bears down and thousands of fairgoers press their faces to the glass, the forty-degree studios become a pressure cooker of flung butter curls, midnight engineering, and the dangerous heat of bodies working inches apart. What begins as a masterclass in structural integrity melts into something far messier: late-night confessions over tempered fat, the thrill of a rival's fingers correcting your technique, and the terrifying realization that the only thing harder than sculpting a life-sized bull from dairy is keeping your heart frozen when the competition starts to look a lot like home.

*Butter Sculptors of Iowa* is a deliciously tactile, slow-burn rivals-to-lovers romance set against the gloriously weird world of competitive butter art—where the stakes are high, the puns are churned fresh daily, and love is the only thing that won't melt under the lights.