An intelligent, involving story of a Regency Cinderella finding a new life and true love.
In Michaels’ Regency romance, a young woman becomes an unexpected heiress.
Young August Summer is languishing in a low-intensity relationship with handsome curate Henry Fitzgerald, who seems to be in no hurry to marry her. Into this uneventful life comes an unexpected bombshell. From his deathbed in the countryside, Lord Bolton instructs his solicitor, Samuel Brooks, to seek out his nonmarital daughter—August. Lord Bolton has never seen the girl, but he fears he will not rest in peace if he doesn’t acknowledge and care for her, so he plans to install her at his ancestral home of Linfield Hall, 30 miles outside of London, right alongside his other children, Charles and Rosamund. He intends to establish her in his world by, among other things, settling an enormous fortune on her (society loves an unexpected heiress, he quips). Samuel is initially appalled by the arrangement; he’s doubtful that such a drastic change will be in anybody’s best interest. Nevertheless, he carries out his commission and contacts August, who’s astonished—and naturally worried about how her half siblings will react to her arrival at the hall. Her sudden vulnerability affects Samuel more than he expected. When readers initially meet him, he’s opposed to the idea of marriage, but he finds his feelings for August steadily blooming even though his ambivalence is only deepened when his task expands to acclimating August to the rarefied atmosphere of the very rich. Their growing attraction is complicated by her half brother’s decision to consign August to the care of her aunt, a dowager duchess dogged by rumors of her own.
The novel is a welter of plotlines and classic Regency tropes. Michaels dives straight into some of the best-known romance conceits, from the Cinderella aspects of August’s sudden rise from poverty to the oddball relationship with an unconventional older character to the confirmed-bachelor-finds-his-true-love device. Michaels imbues these storytelling elements with verve; the book’s narrative drive is strong even in its opening moves and only grows stronger as the tale builds. The main characters are all drawn with a clear, vibrant energy, and even the book’s villains, including, to an extent, August’s half brother, are given a refreshing complexity. Michaels’ strongest gift is pacing. The book jogs along from ball to dinner to carriage ride, and even the scenes in which characters pause and talk manage to contain a good deal of plot furthering. There are darker plot points along the way—Michaels doesn’t shy away from some of the uglier aspects of her time period—but these moments fall away. And although the basic architecture of that plot is very straightforwardly simple—“going from the governess to member of the ton was no easy feat” neatly sums up the bulk of it—it’s pursued with a zest that makes for easy, pleasant reading, all moving with propulsive certainty to pretty much exactly the climax that seasoned Regency readers will expect.
An intelligent, involving story of a Regency Cinderella finding a new life and true love.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73514-013-1
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Mildred Press
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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