A warm and welcoming, though disjointed, holiday romance.
A struggling coffee-shop owner and her most cheerful customer fake a relationship for Hanukkah in this cozy contemporary romance.
Former New Yorker Abby Cohen moved to Vermont for a relationship that didn’t work out, but she stuck around anyway and opened a coffee shop. There’s only one thing—or rather, person—who disturbs her beloved peace and quiet, and that’s the sunny Seth Abrams, a regular at her shop. When it’s revealed that Abby is the only Jewish person on her town’s tourism board, she becomes the de facto head of planning for this year’s Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, Abby is quickly disappointed by the lack of creativity and enthusiasm from other local vendors. In desperation, she takes to the internet to ask for help and is surprised to learn that Seth is also Jewish. (“Apparently, my own Jewdar was broken,” she thinks.) He’s happy to connect Abby with other vendors who could make the Hanukkah festival a hit, but there’s a catch. Abby must play the role of “Nice Jewish Girlfriend” on a trip back to New York to spend Hanukkah with Seth’s family. Seth is endearing and supportive, the sunshine to Abby’s grumpy. They make a very cute couple with their black cat meets golden retriever energies; their interactions are the highlight of the book. Wintertime in New York City is picturesque and romantic, but there’s a reason Abby has stayed away from her old stomping grounds for so long—her verbally abusive parents. The novel’s two settings are in a tug-of-war, and there’s enough detail and motivation to have focused on just one. The small-town power struggle between Abby and Lorna, the president of the yearly festival, makes for a more traditional and fun holiday romance plot. The fake-dating portion in which Abby arrives back home and confronts the terrible behavior of her parents makes this feel like two separate books.
A warm and welcoming, though disjointed, holiday romance.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593815830
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.
A second-chance romance from the author of Slow Dance (2024) and the Simon Snow Trilogy.
Cherry is fat. There are other things to know about Cherry, but this fact is essential to how she sees herself and—she knows—essential to how other people see her. And now that her husband’s hugely popular webcomic is a movie, she not only has to endure people confusing her with the character that’s based on her, but also the knowledge that the actor playing this character is wearing a fat suit. This pain is exacerbated by the fact that her marriage is over. It’s at this rock-bottom moment that her college crush reenters her life…This is a book about being fat, and Rowell does a great job of depicting what internalized fatphobia looks like. “Cherry was so used to thinking about being fat, she hardly even noticed that she was doing it. She was so used to thinking about being fat, she never thought about it.” Observations like this will resonate with a lot of readers, as will Cherry’s complicated feelings about weight-loss drugs. This is also a romance and, as a romance, it’s kind of all over the place. It’s totally realistic for Cherry to wonder if Russ—the guy from college—never pursued her because of her weight. This is a conflict that feels true. What’s less believable is the way he reacts when he sees a trailer for Cherry’s husband’s movie. It’s clear that he didn’t get that this movie was going to be a blockbuster. In short, Russ freaks out, and it’s not at all clear why. As for Cherry’s husband, the way she feels about him at the beginning of the book is totally disconnected from the way she feels about him in the novel’s latter half. It’s normal to have complicated feelings about the end of a marriage, of course, but there’s no emotional throughline to help the reader understand why Cherry’s feelings change so dramatically.
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780063380264
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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