A creative paranormal love story for fantasy fans.
After the death of a close friend, a young woman embarks on a journey that leads her to transcendental love in Hawkinson’s fantasy romance.
Thirty-two-year-old travel agent Jenna Hickson’s life unravels with a single phone call on a frigid January day in New York City. She finds out that her best friend, Padma Kumar, has been struck and killed by a car while crossing the street. Jenna retrieves Padma’s things, which include a flash drive containing Padma’s magnum opus: a novel set in 14th-century Scotland that features a young princess who begins a fantastical adventure. Padma died before she could finish it, so a grieving Jenna vows to do so on her behalf. However, the moment Jenna begins to write, she begins to question her own reality: She finds brand-new edits and markings in Padma’s text that she didn’t make herself, including strikethroughs and a small “P” symbol on various pages; soon it becomes clear that they may have a supernatural origin. Jenna’s days are filled with thoughts of her friend, and her dreams are filled with strange enigmas, including an old castle, a handsome gentleman, and a threatening storm. As Jenna immerses herself in that fantasy world and in Padma’s fictional world, she finds herself driven to visit the real-life Dunnottar Castle—the place that inspired it all. These three plotlines—Padma’s novel, Jenna’s dreams, and Jenna’s trip to Scotland—come together to form a complex romance novel with a touch of the paranormal and plenty of historical lore. Each storyline is thoughtfully plotted and well-paced, and they blend seamlessly without abrupt shifts that might take readers out of the story. There are areas that might have benefited from some revision, such as the excessive amount of detail regarding Jenna’s cat, Jenna’s many emails, and some of Jenna’s day-to-day activities, but she remains a sympathetic protagonist with a clear goal. The sweeping descriptions of Scotland (“The gently undulating sea beckoned….Come closer. Come and touch, feel, and smell me, it seemed to say”) provide an exciting backdrop.
A creative paranormal love story for fantasy fans.Pub Date: June 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1732017559
Page Count: 561
Publisher: Bowker Identifier Services
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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: March 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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