The Best of Us

The Best of Us is Book 4 in Sullivan's Crossing. The CW's official pages keep the adaptation current and identify the show as based on Carr's books, and Harlequin lists this MIRA paperback with ISBN 9780778309024.

This book turns toward Leigh and Helen, two women who have built lives around work, care, and control. Carr uses the Crossing less as a dramatic refuge here and more as a place where people who seem functional still have to decide whether they can be known.

Read it if you like small-town romance about later choices. It is especially useful after the TV series because it shows how the source books keep widening the community beyond the earliest couples.

Leigh Culver is a doctor whose independence protects her and isolates her.

Helen Culver brings an older perspective on love, timing, and the habits people mistake for safety.

Sullivan's Crossing gives both women a social world that keeps gently intruding.

The romantic partners matter because they ask Leigh and Helen to imagine a less defended future.

The returning ensemble keeps the fourth book tied to the established series rather than a separate romance.

No. 1 - Romance after competence. Leigh is not helpless; the question is whether competence has become armor.

No. 2 - Helen's parallel arc. The older-generation romance gives the book a wider emotional range.

No. 3 - Good adaptation texture. TV viewers can see how the source world supports more than Maggie and Cal.

Read this if you are...

• Continuing Sullivan's Crossing after the first three books.
• Interested in romance with medical-career and family-life texture.
• Looking for love stories that include an older-generation arc.
• Reading for the source-world ensemble behind the show.

Skip it if you are...

• Wanting the strongest series entry point.
• Looking for suspense, mystery, or high external stakes.
• Avoiding holiday-adjacent or family-centered romance.
• Expecting a close adaptation of a specific TV season.

• Do not start here unless you like jumping into ensembles. The book assumes the Crossing already matters.
• Compare Leigh and Helen. Their ages differ, but both are deciding whether to risk disruption.
• Watch the medical-work framing. Carr uses it to show control, exhaustion, and service.
• Keep expectations quiet. The book is more about emotional readiness than plot surprise.

• Robyn Carr - The Family Gathering. The previous Sullivan's Crossing book.
• Robyn Carr - The Country Guesthouse. The final main-series book and a stronger caregiving plot.
• Robyn Carr - Virgin River. The natural comparison for Carr's screen-linked town-building.
• Bonnie Garmus - Lessons in Chemistry. For a screen-linked book about competence and reinvention in a very different mode.
• Robyn Carr - The Chance. A verified Thunder Point candidate if you want another Carr small-town romance.

1. What does Leigh gain from being so self-reliant?
2. What does self-reliance cost her?
3. How does Helen's story change the book's view of age and romance?
4. Does the Crossing feel intrusive or caring in this book?
5. How does medical work shape Leigh's emotional habits?
6. Which relationship changes the most quietly?
7. Why might this book be harder to adapt directly than the first one?
8. What does the title mean by "best"?