An entertaining and cute, if somewhat verbose, love story.
An ex-Bostonian falls for her Vermont neighbor in this small-town romance.
Hannah Spencer has had it with her current life. The 28-year-old was recently laid off by her Boston finance firm and isn’t sure how else to use her economics degree. A temporary respite comes in the form of her older sister, Molly, who needs full-time care for her two young children while she and her husband, Ted, both biologists, temporarily leave their Vermont home to undertake summer research projects in Patagonia. Despite carpools and emotional support courtesy of Molly’s best friend, Lea Harris, Hannah discovers that caring for 6-year-old Nora and 4-year-old Owen is equal parts chaos and boredom. To pass the time while the kids are at day camp, Hannah decides to build her niece and nephew a treehouse in the backyard using the expertise she picked up during a post-college volunteer stint in Kenya. Soon, Hannah finds herself attracted to neighbor Nathan Wild, a handsome IT specialist who’s recently relocated to be closer to his loving, boisterous family. Nathan is intelligent, charming, and great with Nora and Owen, and his chemistry with Hannah is off the charts. But Hannah knows this summer fling can’t last forever: What about the rest of her life? Job prospects aren’t exactly flush in this corner of the universe, but can she and Nathan make it work? And will a catastrophic natural disaster change things forever? Drake writes primarily from Hannah’s perspective, with a few chapters from Nathan’s point of view. They are a sweet couple, together and apart: smart, driven, and devoted to their families and, increasingly, each other. This is a relaxing read where the stakes are realistic but not overly stressful until the final section, inspired by Tropical Storm Irene. But the writing style is a bit long-winded and formal, and the author casts Hannah’s two romantic rivals in a bad light—drunk, overly flirtatious, or clueless in general—which feels unnecessary in an otherwise positive tale.
An entertaining and cute, if somewhat verbose, love story.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1647423513
Page Count: 320
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2021
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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