A strong debut romance for fans of true happy endings.
In Deane’s debut novel, a woman finds love, laughter, and purpose in a new teaching job.
When Abigail Gardner goes for an interview at the exclusive Philadelphia prep school Excelsior Primm, she is seeking a second chance to become an art teacher. An embarrassing incident prompted her to leave her previous school, and she is grateful for any opportunity—even if it unexpectedly lands her in a classroom of sixth graders, teaching literature. Desperate for a new start, and with the weight of her father’s reputation as a literature professor and her grief over his death upon her shoulders, Abigail rolls with it, soon becoming entangled in revamping the drama club, which has her students performing an alternative version of Romeo and Juliet. Deane has crafted a quintessential 20-something character searching for her place in the world, occasionally falling back on cliches such as “Abigail wondered how she got here, where she was going, and what she would think one day when she looked back.” Still, Abigail is rendered so endearingly—Deane conveys her thoughts and feelings with great dimension—that readers will happily forgive the occasional shopworn turn of phrase. Her habit of acting as different characters when socializing with her friends is particularly amusing. On a social outing, Abigail runs into Nate, a handsome stranger who turns out to be a fellow teacher at her school. Their romance is slow-burning, in direct contrast to her friendship with Quinn, who is in love with Abigail and whose family treats her as one of their own. Deane takes a well-worn trope in women’s fiction and puts a fun spin on it, weaving in subplots involving Abigail’s students, friendships, and co-workers. The end result is an expansive tale that will have readers rooting for happily-ever-afters for a number of characters in addition to the hero.
A strong debut romance for fans of true happy endings.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 978-1684632404
Page Count: 304
Publisher: SparkPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.
A second-chance romance from the author of Slow Dance (2024) and the Simon Snow Trilogy.
Cherry is fat. There are other things to know about Cherry, but this fact is essential to how she sees herself and—she knows—essential to how other people see her. And now that her husband’s hugely popular webcomic is a movie, she not only has to endure people confusing her with the character that’s based on her, but also the knowledge that the actor playing this character is wearing a fat suit. This pain is exacerbated by the fact that her marriage is over. It’s at this rock-bottom moment that her college crush reenters her life…This is a book about being fat, and Rowell does a great job of depicting what internalized fatphobia looks like. “Cherry was so used to thinking about being fat, she hardly even noticed that she was doing it. She was so used to thinking about being fat, she never thought about it.” Observations like this will resonate with a lot of readers, as will Cherry’s complicated feelings about weight-loss drugs. This is also a romance and, as a romance, it’s kind of all over the place. It’s totally realistic for Cherry to wonder if Russ—the guy from college—never pursued her because of her weight. This is a conflict that feels true. What’s less believable is the way he reacts when he sees a trailer for Cherry’s husband’s movie. It’s clear that he didn’t get that this movie was going to be a blockbuster. In short, Russ freaks out, and it’s not at all clear why. As for Cherry’s husband, the way she feels about him at the beginning of the book is totally disconnected from the way she feels about him in the novel’s latter half. It’s normal to have complicated feelings about the end of a marriage, of course, but there’s no emotional throughline to help the reader understand why Cherry’s feelings change so dramatically.
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780063380264
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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