The poetic language and thoughtful representation offer a smart, sexy panorama of what love can look like.
Six braided Sapphic love stories find women of color looking for romance across borders, years, and the internet, among other obstacles.
After her husband’s early death, Zoya stayed too busy to move on—until she meets Mako at a friend’s work party and there’s instant, undeniable chemistry between them. Although they share an incredible night together, they aren’t compatible long-term. After divorcing an “impotent workaholic,” Noura meets her soulmate, Luna, on a dating app, encouraged by the Greek chorus of her group chat. Ale and Paz casually dance in and out of one another’s lives for years to the beat of the New York club scene, until circumstances find them finally in the same place at the same time, settled enough to compromise. Birdie and Hava meet on a blind date and their slow burn ultimately combusts into a supernova when they discover a shared love of shibari and brat play. Maryam and Nilou’s copy shop meet-cute evolves into a love story that spans playlists, cuisine, and diasporic differences. Goli and Takaya are polar opposites, but when they get stuck in an out-of-order elevator, they’re drawn together like magnetic poles. This book is unlike any other romance. The trigger warning and land acknowledgement encourage reflection on the ways colonialism can be a barrier to vulnerable connection, and the birth chart provided for each character will resonate with astrologically minded readers. With 13 characters spanning seven entanglements of various intensities and spice levels, it’s nearly impossible not to fall in love with at least one pairing. Ideal for fans of The L Word: Generation Q and the latest iteration of Queer as Folk, this book delights in hopeful endings, even where they’re not the most traditional happily-ever-afters.
The poetic language and thoughtful representation offer a smart, sexy panorama of what love can look like.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9798998759673
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Generous Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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