Blending sensual fantasy and the supernatural, this vampire saga takes a welcome turn.
A surprising twist on the vampire trend.
Psychologist and hypnotist Sarah Hagan is enjoying her newfound success as the author of Psychosis and Past Life Regression, a study whose subject she has obsessed over since her painful divorce. Her private practice flourishing, she’s comforted by a handful of close, supportive friends. When one of these friends, a parole officer named Colleen, calls Sarah asking for her help with Carlos, a troubled young ex-con, Sarah is reluctant. Upon hearing more about the youth’s intelligence and sensitivity, however, she agrees to help him overcome his anger issues through hypnosis. What Sarah and Carlos discover through their sessions is more mysterious than even the workings of the subconscious mind: Under hypnosis, Carlos, a survivor of childhood abuse and gang violence, reveals an entirely different self, one who has lived for centuries. This self, Aris, has fought with Alexander the Great and plotted with Queen Anne Boleyn. He has manipulated and murdered—and he’s a vampire. Although she tries to convince herself that Aris is simply Carlos’ subconscious archetypal projection, Sarah begins to harbor doubts about the capacity of her own scientific training to explain the detail and complexity of his hypnosis-induced stories. Over the course of their sessions, Sarah and Carlos are drawn together not only by their shared fascination with Aris’ tale, but by a romantic attraction that threatens to destroy them both. Author Morgan weaves together the thrilling history with a contemporary love story that comes together in an action-filled climax—and an enticing cliffhanger—that will leaves readers thirsty for more.
Blending sensual fantasy and the supernatural, this vampire saga takes a welcome turn.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-0985959616
Page Count: 333
Publisher: BroadLit
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2012
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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