Great characters abound in this romantic fantasy tale of magic, curses, and true love.
A Halloween game with a cash prize turns into a battle with an ancient witch and a chance at true love in Burright’s romantic fantasy novel.
Maggie O’Malley needs a quick influx of cash, or her family home will be auctioned off to pay the loans and taxes that her deadbeat ex-husband refused to pay. When her best friend, Wendy Hayes, learns of a “Magic, Moonlight, and Mayhem” contest in Ireland with a cash prize of $500,000, she convinces Maggie to join in. Maggie and Wendy stay on the Ravenwood Estate in Ireland and meet the handsome, eligible Ravenwood twins, Caedmon and Kellen. Maggie doesn’t believe in all the woo-woo spiritual stuff involved in the competition, but she’s willing to fake it for a chance to start her life over. Wendy gets sick immediately after they get to their rooms, leaving Maggie to face the challenges alone. It transpires that Kellen has been cursed for six centuries, and this is his last chance at freedom before succumbing entirely (“Seven days to either true freedom or eternal imprisonment”). Caedmon believes the solution is a human sacrifice, something Kellen refuses, especially when he learns that the one human who could break his curse is not just the original spellcaster’s descendant—one Maggie O’Malley—but his fated true love. Burright’s romantic fantasy packs a lot of action into one novel. The contest, Maggie’s ostensible reason for being in Ireland, fades into the background as the story progresses, and the rituals performed as part of the competition feel underdeveloped and almost childish. It’s clear the author concentrated more on developing the characters and the love story, and it was time well spent: Kellen is open and honest with Maggie, expresses his love and devotion to his brother, and refuses to compromise his values, making him stand out in a world of literary alpha males.
Great characters abound in this romantic fantasy tale of magic, curses, and true love.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781649379535
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.
A violent attack hijacks a woman’s memory in this novel of domestic suspense.
McFadden wastes no time pulling the trigger in this harrowing story that starts with gunfire then swiftly propels readers into a crack tale of secrets and misdirection. Originally self-published in 2016, the book carries the same formidable weight as McFadden’s later novels featuring unsuspecting women who lose their power then fight to recapture it—mostly from men who have betrayed them. That formula perfectly fits Dr. Charlotte McKenna, a 37-year-old dermatologist who isn’t looking for love until the most handsome man she’s ever seen begins to woo her. There are warning signs about Clark Douglas and Charlotte overlooks them to her detriment—but is he a killer? The novel has dual timelines split between events leading up to the day Charlotte barely survives a head wound meant to kill her and the months afterward, when she struggles to reclaim her memory and her mobility. In real life, McFadden is a physician trained to treat brain injuries. Her expertise gives Charlotte’s rehabilitation authenticity, and her writing talent makes it interesting and engaging. As good as that timeline is, readers will yearn to get back to the alternate timeline about who wants Charlotte dead. It’s only a matter of time before Charlotte starts to remember who tried to kill her, and the clock is ticking toward their next attempt. McFadden dishes up plenty of suspects: Charlotte’s secretive husband, Clark; a former patient turned stalker who confronts Charlotte on her honeymoon; and the angry husband of a patient who blames Charlotte for his wife leaving him. Though the story is delicious and dark, McFadden brightens things up with a possible love interest for Charlotte and a surprise ending sure to please the author’s many fans.
Starts with a bang and closes with a knockout punch of an ending.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249617
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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