A fast, fun read that would have benefited from less setup and more action.
A self-proclaimed “hillbilly” finds unexpected film stardom and romance.
“Southern women are unique; there is no disputing that.” So begins Torre’s novel starring 29-year-old Summer Jenkins of Quincy, Georgia, a small town with nearly 50 millionaire families who, back in the day, bought shares in a yet-unknown company called Coca-Cola. Summer and her beauty queen–turned–bank-teller mother, however, are outcasts. They weren’t born and raised in Quincy, and an incident involving Summer, her wealthy ex-fiance, and a backstabbing bridal party still looms large in the minds of Quincy’s elite. Three years later, Summer longs to escape but lacks the resources until Hollywood comes to town. Superstar Cole Masten is producing and starring in The Fortune Bottle,a film adaptation of a novel about Quincy’s rags-to-riches history. He’s searching for an escape of his own after catching his movie star wife Nadia Smith in flagrante with her latest director and starting divorce proceedings with Brad DeLuca, a shark of a lawyer. Summer first befriends flamboyant location scout Bennington Payne and introduces him to the town—for a price—but when Cole arrives in Quincy and clashes with the feisty small-town woman in a spectacular fashion, he sees something he never expected: a leading lady. As Summer struggles to adapt to an acting job that could propel her out of Quincy for good, she fights her feelings for the cocksure actor, which are fast progressing from lust to love. New York Times bestselling author Torre provides both Summer’s and Cole’s perspectives, giving insight into the copious obstacles each is overcoming—as well as more than one steamy sex scene. Based on a real town, Quincy is a quirky, enjoyable character on its own. However, the first two-thirds of the book set up Summer and Cole’s inevitable relationship and then skims over many of their conflicts, missing an opportunity for rich exploration.
A fast, fun read that would have benefited from less setup and more action.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5394-6909-4
Page Count: 429
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
A smart, steamy romance.
Tomforde’s sports romance pairs boardroom power plays with dugout drama.
As the youngest and only female owner of a Major League Baseball team, Reese Remington is used to pressure. Even though Reese is the granddaughter of the Windy City Warriors’ former owner, the men around her still question her position; she’ll “most likely have to work twice as hard and make [the] club’s success twice as noticeable to have any hope of being viewed as the right person to operate this team.” It doesn’t help that the franchise is bleeding money, the result of her grandfather’s hands-off approach in the years before his retirement. Reese must use her razor-sharp intelligence and fierce business sense to not only prove herself in a role in which the public is eager to see her fail, but also to make unpopular financial decisions to get the team out of the red. Enter Emmett Montgomery, a former All-Star turned field manager whose priorities lie firmly with people rather than profit. A man devoted to his team and his adopted child, Emmett has long since closed the door on romance, despite gentle nudging from his loved ones. His empathetic team-first mentality puts him immediately at odds with Reese’s pragmatic agenda, and with his contract up at the end of the year, Emmett worries he’ll be on the chopping block if he speaks out too much. Told from the perspectives of the leads, the novel gives equal page time to Reese and Emmett. Their concerns––the scrutiny Reese must endure as a woman in a male-dominated industry, and Emmett’s worries over his contract renewal––are tangible and add a sense of urgency to their every decision. While the novel includes some unavoidable exposition dumps to orient readers, it more than compensates by establishing clear stakes and a sense of momentum from the outset. The narrative successfully introduces credible barriers to the romance, which largely follows recognizable genre beats. The baseball setting is also used effectively, with the season-long arc mirroring the couple’s romantic and professional journeys.
A smart, steamy romance.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781649379795
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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