An entertaining erotic novel with punchy prose that gets at the emotion underneath the raunch.
Members of Alabama’s Black upper crust pursue sexual intrigues in this frisky romance.
Johnson’s story charts love lives amongst Birmingham’s financially successful Black bourgeoisie. The players include Dana, a call-center manager and poet who gives readings at fashionable nightspot Lucky’s Lounge; she’s having an affair with the venue’s owner, Token, a wealthy architect. Though she is raptly attentive to Token’s sexual demands—his nickname for her is M.B., which stands for “My Bitch”—Dana’s anger at him for refusing to divorce his wife Tiara is not appeased by gifts of jewelry or even an Audi R8 with a giant red bow on top. Then there’s Giselle, also known as DJ Jazzy G at radio station V99.4, who’s getting over a heartrending breakup when her pal Amber sends her a luscious nude photo of attractive car salesman Monty Jones; her flirty direct-message exchanges with Monty quickly escalate to phone sex. Giselle is momentarily put off when she learns that Monty is also a “sexual development companion” who had been hired by Amber to help her get her groove back, but she shrugs it off and signs up for Monty’s hands-on development services. Amber treats herself when she goes on a cruise with her boring bank-owner husband Gene and meets handsome private eye Leo on the Lido deck. After drugging Gene with a sedative, Amber repairs to Leo’s cabin for an assignation in which the illicit couple is joined by Leo’s cousin Ethan. The only one not seeing any action is poor Tiara, whose 20-year marriage to Token has frayed since she was waylaid by major depression and gained 60 pounds—her 8,000 square foot mansion feels like a “prison.” When Tiara and Dana both show up at Lucky’s 10th anniversary bash, the stage is set for tense confrontations that culminate in passion and fire.
Johnson’s yarn is cheerfully lubricious, with much parading of lingerie and lots of explicit sex. The characters are energetic and sharply drawn, if a bit two-dimensional—the two dimensions being lust and greed. (Contemplating marriage to Token, Dana “imagined getting her own black card and shopping limitlessly….getting to leave the workforce to be a stay-at-home housewife….it made her climax harder than she ever had before.”) There’s plenty of tawdry atmosphere, conveyed in evocative prose that sneaks some intelligent reflection beneath the characters’ impulsiveness. (“It took all I had not to burst out of there and beat her ass. But what would that do, huh? Get me banned from the club and lose out on my dream, that’s what.”) While the story is awash in sex, Johnson can also deftly evoke the plangent feelings that accompany a dying relationship: “When Token does make it home for dinner,” Tiara muses, “the conversation is scarce. We sit on opposite ends of our long, rectangular table, barely making eye contact.” The result is a fun, erotic romp that has a heart as well as a healthy libido.
An entertaining erotic novel with punchy prose that gets at the emotion underneath the raunch.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2021
ISBN: 9798752074394
Page Count: 147
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.
A Seattle woman meets a Chicago businessman as she flies home from a visit to a friend, and her small act of kindness blossoms into more.
Maisy Gallagher is barely making ends meet. With her father’s unexpected death a few years earlier, she dropped out of nursing school to help out in the family’s jewelry store, working with her uncle. Her older brother, Sean, also moved back home so he and Maisy could help their mother and their 10-year-old brother, Patrick. When Maisy offers a ride to a rude businessman who sat next to her on the plane, she’s just operating on the kindness her grandmother instilled in her. That businessman, Chase Furst, turns out to be an incredibly wealthy banker; he’s flown into Seattle to make funeral arrangements for his mother, to whom he hasn’t spoken in years. Sparks fly in this gentle and predictable romance that leans heavily on long-distance and class-divide tropes. As with many of the author’s books, Christianity and the characters’ reliance on God’s will—as they wait and see what happens next—play a large part, as do traditional gender roles where women cook, clean, and only work in paying jobs until they have children at home to take care of. The author does offer a lighter touch when it comes to the painful ways alcoholism can destroy family relationships, with an understanding of the regret that can weigh on every family member.
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091676
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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