A contemplative, risk-taking novel that favors resonance over resolution.
Lane crafts a hushed novel of repair, memory, and belonging in which the transformation of an abandoned chapel parallels the quiet realignments of its restorers.
At the center of the narrative, set in the small town of Wintermere, are Sera Linden and Julian Vero, whose bond is revealed less through dialogue than through silence, shared labor, and gestures that skirt definition. Sera is leading a local revitalization project while Julian is undertaking a personal rebuilding task at the chapel.Their companions along the way—bookshop owner Ruth, coffee shop owner Gwen, cafe worker Jane—bring shades of conflict and communal tension, but the narrative’s truest focus is the slow, nearly devotional attention to the space in which they dwell. St. Avila’s chapel emerges not only as backdrop but as a living presence: damaged, tended, and finally restored without spectacle. Lane weaves recurring objects—a compass, sea glass, ash, wildflowers—into a symbolic range that roots the novel’s abstractions in tactile forms. Lane’s prose is lyrical and deliberate, its rhythm closer to liturgy than to plot-driven fiction: Time blurs, and chapters linger in long stillnesses in which light through a window or a hand touching a wooden doorframe carries emotional weight: “Sera stood at the threshold, one hand brushing the frame, as if needing to feel the grain of it before entering.” The work is not one of dramatic revelations but of placing of a piece of sea glass on a windowsill, or assembling an altar without ceremony. The closing movement shifts outward, showing St. Avila’s as a space that continues on, absorbing offerings from unnamed visitors and rumored to harbor two silent figures at dusk. The effect is elegiac and quietly mythic. However, the risks of such narrative restraint are real; the novel sometimes sags under its own quietude with extended passages of silence and symbolism that risk redundancy. Secondary characters recede in the final chapters, leaving the ending feeling almost too ethereal, with its emotional resonance dependent on readers’ patience with ambiguity; as such, those who might crave sharper dramatic arcs or concrete closure may find frustration.
A contemplative, risk-taking novel that favors resonance over resolution.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2025
ISBN: 9798999233684
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Stone House Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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