A thoughtful, introspection-filled, bite-sized romance.
Sometimes it takes just one night to change everything.
Shera Benoit finally feels ready to reenter the dating pool after her last relationship left her with insecurities and trust issues. She’s been eyeing Michael, a newcomer to the LA scene, for the past few months, and she finally asks him out despite red flags like his flightiness, self-involvement, and the way he asks her “So where are you from—originally?”—a question the biracial Shera is used to getting, but “the framing…made [her] feel divorced from humanity.” When she gets to the bar where they’re supposed to meet, though, Michael shows up late, and it’s Irish punk band frontman Max King who makes her feel desired. She winds up going home with him instead, but starts second-guessing her decision pretty quickly. Max’s honesty and openness comfort her, though, and she allows herself to be vulnerable as they talk. As the late night turns to early morning, Shera and Max’s conversations and intimate moments lead them both to experience a rollercoaster of emotions, confront difficult pasts, and question deeply held beliefs. At first, readers might think they’re in for a fun, spicy romance, but this brief novel is really more of a close character study of two flawed people who evolve through their relationship as they learn not just about each other, but about themselves. Shera’s namesake is the storyteller Scheherazade from Arabian Nights, and this fits both with Shera’s aspirations as a writer and her captivating, poetic first-person narrative throughout the book. Some of the big emotional swings feel exaggerated, but they add necessary tension and conflict, and make the ending all the more satisfying.
A thoughtful, introspection-filled, bite-sized romance.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9798893310207
Page Count: 160
Publisher: 831 Stories
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
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
A smart, steamy romance.
Tomforde’s sports romance pairs boardroom power plays with dugout drama.
As the youngest and only female owner of a Major League Baseball team, Reese Remington is used to pressure. Even though Reese is the granddaughter of the Windy City Warriors’ former owner, the men around her still question her position; she’ll “most likely have to work twice as hard and make [the] club’s success twice as noticeable to have any hope of being viewed as the right person to operate this team.” It doesn’t help that the franchise is bleeding money, the result of her grandfather’s hands-off approach in the years before his retirement. Reese must use her razor-sharp intelligence and fierce business sense to not only prove herself in a role in which the public is eager to see her fail, but also to make unpopular financial decisions to get the team out of the red. Enter Emmett Montgomery, a former All-Star turned field manager whose priorities lie firmly with people rather than profit. A man devoted to his team and his adopted child, Emmett has long since closed the door on romance, despite gentle nudging from his loved ones. His empathetic team-first mentality puts him immediately at odds with Reese’s pragmatic agenda, and with his contract up at the end of the year, Emmett worries he’ll be on the chopping block if he speaks out too much. Told from the perspectives of the leads, the novel gives equal page time to Reese and Emmett. Their concerns––the scrutiny Reese must endure as a woman in a male-dominated industry, and Emmett’s worries over his contract renewal––are tangible and add a sense of urgency to their every decision. While the novel includes some unavoidable exposition dumps to orient readers, it more than compensates by establishing clear stakes and a sense of momentum from the outset. The narrative successfully introduces credible barriers to the romance, which largely follows recognizable genre beats. The baseball setting is also used effectively, with the season-long arc mirroring the couple’s romantic and professional journeys.
A smart, steamy romance.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781649379795
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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