A fine blend of genres with an engaging protagonist.
A Western time-travel romance in which a woman goes back in time to save a handsome gambler.
In 1880 Arizona, Caleb Young is gambling with a few friendly men in a saloon when a suspicious stranger walks in and asks to join them. When the stranger obviously cheats, Caleb calls him out on it, and the man reacts poorly by drawing his gun. Caleb does, too, and the altercation ends with the stranger dead. Caleb leaves town, finding a run-down cabin in the middle of nowhere to hide, but a mysterious figure finds and shoots him, leaving him for dead. In 2019 Seattle, Dr. Emily Sweeney is just starting her trauma-center shift when she hears gunshots coming from the waiting room. She runs toward the scene and gets shot while attempting to help. Emily never wakes up—at least, not in her own body or in her own time. She has a vision of an older gentleman who claims to be her great-great-grandfather and says that he has a gift for her. Emily then wakes up dressed in strange clothing, some 200 feet from a cabin where more gunshots ring out. Soon, she finds a half-dead Arizonan bleeding out. It’s clear that Emily and Caleb are inexplicably connected and potentially in danger. Over the course of this novel, Swenson presents a story that not only flows through different eras with ease, but also through different genres with equal facility. The narrative is solidly paced and displays the author’s gift for salient detail, and the chronology moves forward and backward, as necessary, to provide readers with the full story without ever sacrificing clarity along the way. The characters feel fully fleshed-out and genuine; readers will be particularly intrigued by Emily’s modern perspective on a time and place that’s very different from her own.
A fine blend of genres with an engaging protagonist.Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-09-833571-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2021
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
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.
Sasha Cadell has survived against all odds, holding onto her loved ones and strangers as they take their last breaths—and that’s why she’s known as Death’s Angel.
For six years Sasha has lived in Haven, the underground society built to withstand nuclear war. Since the war, since her family’s deaths, since discovering she doesn’t get sick like everyone else does, Sasha’s life has been full of death and overfull with grief. While working in the Ward, Haven’s limited hospital, she stays with patients as they die. When Tristian Hayes, a unit commander of the Force, ends up as her patient, hanging on for his life, she pleads for him to stay alive. He does—upending her bleak ritual as Death’s Angel. Hoping to forget everything she’s seen and to numb the pain, Sasha leaves the Ward in favor of a role with a pickax, expanding Haven’s tunnels. Tristian, fiercely determined and stunningly stubborn, recruits Sasha to the Force for a vital mission aboveground. The story picks up steam with Sasha’s intense training to become the medic for Tristian’s tightknit unit. Together, they bear the weight of their unit’s survival and all that’s left of humankind. While in training, Sasha struggles to discern friends and enemies, but nothing is as challenging as facing her own demons. In this prequel to her debut novel, Conform (2025), Sullivan tries to accomplish a lot with both the worldbuilding and plot machinations, resulting in a convoluted story and flattened characters. The plot doesn’t have a satisfying payoff, but the romantic tension between Sasha and Tristian will keep readers engaged.
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091027
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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