A quarterback's fight for systemic change in football takes a back seat to his girlfriend's personal journey.
A woman examines her own life after landing her dream public relations job with a pro football team.
Elliot Reed is a biracial woman who knows working for the Denver Mustangs will be challenging, but she doesn’t expect to be thrust into the middle of a PR nightmare the first week of the season. Quinton Howard Junior, the team’s new Black quarterback, protests racism in football and society by taping over the league’s name on his uniform and taking a knee during the national anthem. The team’s owner tells Elliot that if she can’t convince Quinton to stop protesting, she’ll eventually lose her job. Elliot understands Quinton's reasoning, but she decides to use her PR skills to convince him to start his own foundation, hoping it will redirect his energy while placating the team’s owner. The romance is a late-stage and underdeveloped thread in the novel. Instead, the focus is on Elliot’s personal journeys: maintaining her female friendships, struggling to keep her job, dealing with her grief over her father’s death, and learning how racism works. After Elliot’s Black mother died when she was a baby, her White father “raised [her] with the mentality to be color-blind,” and she learns that racism is real from Quinton, his agent, and her White friends. Perhaps Martin’s intent is to teach White readers about racism in sports and in America, but unfortunately this means Elliot is characterized as someone who has spent her entire life ignoring the racial aggressions she has witnessed and experienced. She tells Quinton, “I try to ignore race, and what you’re doing is forcing me to examine things in a way I never have.” The book neuters Quinton's Colin Kaepernick–like protest, turning it into a cutesy romantic plot device instead of respecting it as a furious, full-throated repudiation of the real injustices faced by Black Americans.
A quarterback's fight for systemic change in football takes a back seat to his girlfriend's personal journey.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-10250-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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: March 15, 2026
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.
A heartbroken man lusts after his therapist while seeking revenge on a drug kingpin and his enforcer.
Mitch Haskell’s wife, Angela, died two years ago of an apparent suicide, but Mitch has always believed the scene was staged. Certainly, she would never have willingly left their young son, Andrew, behind. Consumed with a thirst for vengeance, Mitch—a former Marine and undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and currently a police detective—is struggling with alcohol dependency and uncontrolled rage. Andrew is living with his in-laws, who are making not-so-subtle suggestions that they might apply for permanent guardianship if Mitch can’t get it together. So his boss and best friend, John Bowie, mandates that he go into therapy, which puts him in the path of sexy Dr. Dylan Reede. Within a few days, Mitch makes a connection between two new murders and the death of his former partner; finds a big clue that points to the truth about Angela’s death; goes undercover as a homeless man; takes on a vicious drug cartel; and obnoxiously bullies Dylan with a charm offensive that leads them inevitably to bed. While Mitch seems to lean into the stereotype of the ex-soldier/cop with deeply buried trauma who believes that the ends justify the means—at least in law enforcement—Dylan offers the strength and sweetness to help him start breaking down his walls, allowing herself to be vulnerable in turn. Is passionate sex enough to ground a relationship and a family for the long term? For these characters, and the breakneck speed of this thriller, it’s as good a foundation as any.
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781538743027
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
