A slow-moving story in which people trying to do their best find their happy ending.
After five years together and three apart, two marine biologists are unexpectedly reunited by work in South Carolina.
It’s been three years since Hope Evans’ and Adrian Hollis-Parker’s long-distance—yet all-encompassing—relationship fizzled out when Hope decided she needed more time before moving in together. She’s spent that time helping a recently widowed friend with her children and her new recreation business on Lake Michigan, while Adrian accidentally went viral helping a beached shark. He’s parlayed the attention into a thriving social media presence and YouTube channel that’s enabled him to further his research and build the life he thought he always wanted. Shark research—and their feelings for one another—are the most important things to both of them. With encouragement and concern from Zuri, Hope’s friend in Michigan; Adrian’s cousin Marissa; and Gabe, Adrian’s cameraman, Hope and Adrian work through their feelings for one another as they conduct shark research and outreach over the course of the summer. The story is told in alternating points of view, and Hope and Adrian are each consumed by missing the other, wanting to do their best work, and concern about getting their hearts broken again. The emotions that arise when they’re near each other is described in great detail. People looking for a few pages to read before falling asleep every night will appreciate the cyclic nature of the couple’s thoughts.
A slow-moving story in which people trying to do their best find their happy ending.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781335476999
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Canary Street Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
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
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