A swoonworthy romance reminiscent of a Nora Ephron movie.
A therapist finds herself torn between two men: one too good to be true, and the other who couldn’t be more wrong.
Eleanora Fischer is in love with a man she’s never met...technically. For the past seven years, Nora, a New York therapist, has been writing an advice column for a London-based newspaper, and every Tuesday she gets edits for Ask Eleanora via a Google Doc from her copy editor, known only as “J.W.” Though they’ve never chatted outside of a word-processing document, Nora feels a deep connection with J and cherishes their witty, often personal banter, though she’s afraid that revealing her feelings would ruin the relationship. When her boss at the Sunday Tribune invites her to London at the end of the summer, Nora will finally have a chance to meet J in person. With a planned meetup on the horizon, all Nora has to do is survive the next few months dealing with her cranky new neighbor, a surly Brit named Eli Whitman. He’s just moved in upstairs and is already wreaking havoc, hammering away and submitting plans to build a rooftop party zone in Nora’s quiet Greenwich Village co-op. And the cherry on top? Eli is a former—disgruntled—client of Nora’s from a couple’s therapy session that ended up with him getting dumped mid-appointment. He seems hellbent on destroying her peace and quiet, though Nora is up for the challenge. And she can’t help but notice that this prickly Englishman is quite handsome, though, personality-wise, he’s everything J isn’t. Is her connection with J all in her head, and, either way, how could she now be falling for his complete opposite? Rosen’s enemies-to-lovers romance is a delightfully modern take on You’ve Got Mail, mixed with the kind of will-they, won’t-they sort-of love triangle that’s the bread and butter of all rom-coms. Eli is a dashing crankster with a backstory, Nora is a therapist with vulnerabilities, and J is the mysterious perfect man who always knows what to say—and readers will be eating it up happily.
A swoonworthy romance reminiscent of a Nora Ephron movie.Pub Date: March 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781662527920
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.
A Seattle woman meets a Chicago businessman as she flies home from a visit to a friend, and her small act of kindness blossoms into more.
Maisy Gallagher is barely making ends meet. With her father’s unexpected death a few years earlier, she dropped out of nursing school to help out in the family’s jewelry store, working with her uncle. Her older brother, Sean, also moved back home so he and Maisy could help their mother and their 10-year-old brother, Patrick. When Maisy offers a ride to a rude businessman who sat next to her on the plane, she’s just operating on the kindness her grandmother instilled in her. That businessman, Chase Furst, turns out to be an incredibly wealthy banker; he’s flown into Seattle to make funeral arrangements for his mother, to whom he hasn’t spoken in years. Sparks fly in this gentle and predictable romance that leans heavily on long-distance and class-divide tropes. As with many of the author’s books, Christianity and the characters’ reliance on God’s will—as they wait and see what happens next—play a large part, as do traditional gender roles where women cook, clean, and only work in paying jobs until they have children at home to take care of. The author does offer a lighter touch when it comes to the painful ways alcoholism can destroy family relationships, with an understanding of the regret that can weigh on every family member.
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091676
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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
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