With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This mystery’s foremost puzzle? The human heart.
A Los Angeles–based podcaster is AWOL in Crum’s debut, a thriller-romance mashup.
Joy Moore, one half of the chart-topping “comedy survival podcast” This Story Might Save Your Life, is acting strange. She privately tells her co-podcaster and best friend, Benny Abbott, that she wants to take a break from podcasting and will explain why later. The next day, when Benny arrives to record at the home Joy shares with her husband, Xander, who handles podcast business, the couple isn’t there and the house appears vandalized. Benny phones Joy and Xander, but they don’t pick up. He summons the cops and reminds them that Joy is being stalked by someone who “claims to be our biggest fan” and demonstrates this by secretly snapping her picture and posting the images on social media. When it comes to Joy’s stalker, the police have been useless—“They say it doesn’t fit the definition of harassment or something,” Benny grouses—so what’s a podcaster to do but ask his listeners for help? Crum has a smart solution to the problem of how to maintain the mystery of Joy’s whereabouts without sacrificing the character’s viewpoint: The novel’s first half largely alternates between Benny’s present-day narration and Joy-authored chapters pulled from the memoir she and Benny are cowriting. This way, the novel’s readers hear from both parties on the matter consuming Joy’s and Benny’s listeners: As Joy puts it, “Everyone, literally everyone, asks if we were ever romantically involved.” The novel’s did-they-or-didn’t-they/will-they-or-won’t-they tease goes down like a fizzy drink until the story takes a surprising turn at the midpoint. Here the plot sheds much of its mystery and a bit of its allure, although by book’s end, Crum has reconstituted that initial sizzle.
This mystery’s foremost puzzle? The human heart.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781250395238
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pine & Cedar/Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.
Two struggling authors spend the summer writing and falling in love in a quaint beach town.
January Andrews has just arrived in the small town of North Bear Shores with some serious baggage. Her father has been dead for a year, but she still hasn’t come to terms with what she found out at his funeral—he had been cheating on her mother for years. January plans to spend the summer cleaning out and selling the house her father and “That Woman” lived in together. But she’s also a down-on-her-luck author facing writer’s block, and she no longer believes in the happily-ever-after she’s made the benchmark of her work. Her steadily dwindling bank account, though, is a daily reminder that she must sell her next book, and fast. Serendipitously, she discovers that her new next-door neighbor is Augustus Everett, the darling of the literary fiction set and her former college rival/crush. Gus also happens to be struggling with his next book (and some serious trauma that unfolds throughout the novel). Though the two get off to a rocky start, they soon make a bet: Gus will try to write a romance novel, and January will attempt “bleak literary fiction.” They spend the summer teaching each other the art of their own genres—January takes Gus on a romantic outing to the local carnival; Gus takes January to the burned-down remains of a former cult—and they both process their own grief, loss, and trauma through this experiment. There are more than enough steamy scenes to sustain the slow-burn romance, and smart commentary on the placement and purpose of “women’s fiction” joins with crucial conversations about mental health to add multiple intriguing layers to the plot.
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0673-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Jove/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
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