Another delightful, funny, yet heart-wrenching must-read romance from Higgins.
After proposing to her “best-friend-with-benefits” and being summarily rejected, Honor Holland meets professor Tom Barlow, who needs a green card, and the two agree to a marriage of convenience, risking jail time, their reputations and their hearts.
When Honor turns 35, she takes the bull by the horns and proposes marriage to her lifelong best friend, Brogan, a successful sports photographer who enjoys a casual sexual relationship with Honor. Humiliated when he rejects her, Honor admits she wants marriage and children but doesn’t have a lot of choices in tiny Manningsport, N.Y. She is surprised when her elderly grandmother connects her with a local professor who needs a green card since his college didn’t renew his work visa. Tom desperately wants to stay in the country for his unofficial stepson, Charlie, whose mother Tom was engaged to but died before they were married. Charlie is an angry, bitter teenager who now lives with his indifferent grandparents, so trying to reach him is difficult. Things start to improve when Charlie and Tom spend time with Honor’s large extended family, and real affection seems to spring up among everyone involved. On the other hand, Brogan has hooked up with Honor’s best girlfriend, Dana, and now, they’re over the moon because Dana is pregnant, and Dana is unpleasantly smug toward Honor, whom Dana basically betrayed. Honor is coming to realize that Tom is the true catch, though trying to convince him her feelings are sincere gets more complicated, what with Immigration investigating, Charlie’s father back on the scene and Honor’s family creating their typical havoc on her otherwise well-ordered life. Higgins takes the familiar marriage-of-convenience trope and modernizes it with her consummate skill in combining tender insight, bright humor and flawless character development. This, the second of the Blue Heron series (The Best Man, 2013), shines with Higgins’ capacity for creating complicated layers ultimately laid bare to the most elemental emotions.
Another delightful, funny, yet heart-wrenching must-read romance from Higgins.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-373-77819-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harlequin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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