A cozy black cat/golden retriever romance.
After agreeing to teach art at a New England resort for the summer, two cabin mates realize they have the same ex in Blake’s latest queer romance.
One could say April Evans has been grumpy lately—not only did her best friend, Ramona, move across the country, but April had to close her failing tattoo parlor and rent out her home to pay the mortgage. The one bright spot is her upcoming gig at Cloverwild, a new resort in Clover Lake, New Hampshire. In exchange for free housing over the summer, April will teach an art class and hopefully regain some of her spark. April can’t attribute all of her grouchiness to recent events, however; some credit must go to her former fiancée, Elena Watson. Three years ago, Elena abruptly dumped April for an art student 10 years her junior, leaving her heartbroken. Now in her 30s, April hopes to use this summer as a fresh start, until she learns that her co-teacher and cabin-mate is none other than Daphne Love, Elena’s other woman. At first glance, Daphne is everything April isn’t, and it’s obvious that she has no idea who April even is. At 25, Daphne is young and inexperienced, having grown up in a strict Baptist family that rejected her and then spent her early 20s practically trophy-wifing for her ex, Elena. She hopes this new teaching job can help her mature, and it would be great if her roommate didn’t inexplicably hate her. As April and Daphne teach together and compete for a lucrative art exhibit in London, they can’t help but grow closer in spite of their shared past. Blake’s new Clover Lake title explores two scorned lovers learning to trust again, crafting vulnerable, real relationships with a fair share of steamy moments. Sasha, their free-wheeling, good-time friend, is a standout character, and fans of Dream on, Ramona Riley (2025) will be glad to see Ramona and Dylan’s romance take the next step.
A cozy black cat/golden retriever romance.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780593816011
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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