Another knockout by Lauren.
Lauren's (Dating You, Hating You, 2017, etc.) latest romantic comedy features a marriage of convenience between an up-and-coming Broadway star and a woman desperately trying to find her place in the world.
Holland Bakker isn’t expecting to get married anytime soon, but when she's rescued from a drunk who attacks her on a subway platform by an Irish busker, the situation changes. Her knight in shining armor is Calvin McLoughlin, and Holland has had a major crush on him for ages, even memorizing his performing schedule in her local station. To thank him for his gallant behavior, she offers to get him an audition for her uncle's wildly successful Broadway musical. The audition goes better than expected, and Calvin is offered a spot, but there’s just one problem: his visa has expired. Impulsively, Holland offers to marry Calvin so he can stay in the U.S., saying the two of them will simply be roommates. It will be a marriage on paper but nothing else. While the setup requires some suspension of disbelief, Lauren makes Holland and Calvin relatable and, most importantly, believable. Holland is the standout character, so used to filling roles for other people—niece, confidant, errand girl—that she has no concept of who she is for herself. While Holland’s journey is integral to the lovely, heart-melting romance, her point of view is the only one readers receive, making Calvin’s presence slightly less dynamic than it could have been. However, that's a minor quibble given that this book has everything that makes romance novels great: a heroine’s journey to self-discovery, a leading man worthy of a woman’s love, and plenty of misty tears and full-on belly laughs along the way.
Another knockout by Lauren.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6583-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
A wild, brilliant ride.
The final segment of the Honey Badger Chronicles pairs middle sister Max MacKilligan with an oblivious jaguar shifter who attempts to save her and winds up finding himself.
When an attempted kidnapping of honey badger shifter Max goes south, ZeZé Vargas, one of the kidnappers who's a shifter though he doesn't know it, tries to protect her and is injured. After Max takes ZeZé home to New York and he heals, she's prepared to turn him loose, but her older sister, Charlie, demands she take some responsibility and help Zé navigate his new reality. “You brought him here, Max. You told him the truth. Now you need to deal with the repercussions of those actions.” Zé soon learns how unique the MacKilligan half sisters are. Fiercely loyal and superlethal when they choose to be, they mostly want to be left in peace. However, thanks to their idiot father and Max’s criminal mother, who’s recently escaped from prison, everyone wants something from them—information, money, or skills, for instance—pitting them against mercenaries, hostile family members, and even law enforcement. In the midst of the chaos, Zé begins to make sense of the sisters’ odd relationships with each other and the vast, unexpected network of friends and allies around them, and for the first time, he feels at home in his own skin and right where he’s supposed to be, with Max by his side. Laurenston ends the MacKilligan sisters trilogy with a flourish, blending humor, action, and romance in her own inimitable and fabulous fashion, and she reminds us that family can be blood or choice and that different races (Max is half Chinese; Charlie is African American; Zé is Latino) and species can get along when they decide to, aided at times by baked goods. A sprawling cast of shifters combined with an intricate, complex plot can occasionally be confusing, but everything comes together in the end, and the characters, worldbuilding, and storytelling are vivid, inventive, and completely entertaining.
A wild, brilliant ride.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1440-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Another Psy/Changeling page-turner from the brilliant Singh.
After saving a woman from a serial killer, a wolf changeling will do anything to keep her safe, but the stakes get higher when her unique powers may signal the worldwide rise of aggressive rogue energy.
Nearing the first anniversary of his brother’s death, Alexei Harte picks up an overwhelming psychic broadcast of grief and discovers an empath imprisoned in an underground bunker. When he rescues her, at first her only emotions seem to be rage and grief for her recently deceased cat. But as Memory begins to trust Alexei and the world he helps her enter, her conflicted, negative emotions begin to calm. The other empaths she meets help her understand that her gifts are unique and powerful and reframe them beyond her violent past which forced her to use them to help a psychopath. The more they work with her, the more they come to believe that she might be particularly positioned to help strengthen the complicated PsyNet, the vast psychic network on which the Psy depend to keep them connected and healthy. Alexei, meanwhile, is wrestling with the death of his brother, who went violently rogue one year earlier. He’s definitely interested in making Memory his mate but worries he carries the rogue genes that threaten her even as he’s trying to keep her safe from a variety of other dangers. The Psy/Changeling Trinity series continues with another complex, fascinating angle to the fall of Silence and its manifestations. Alexei’s family represents the rogue component in the Changeling world, while Memory both represents and acts as the first line of defense against a rising rogue element within the Psy. Favorite alpha characters weave through the story, meeting the new challenge with their typical intelligence, flexibility, and collaboration.
Another Psy/Changeling page-turner from the brilliant Singh.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0359-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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