Low on plausibility but high on entertaining drama, dialogue, and hot romance.
A woman’s search for closure with an ex is upturned by a hot new man in this romance novel.
North Carolina native Kesler “Kez” Walsh was sure that her handsome, funny, and bright law school boyfriend, Miller Thompson, was ideal husband material. But after graduation, Miller left the South, returning to Rochester, New York, while Kez took a good job in Charlotte. After many arguments and drunken phone calls from Miller claiming his love, they couldn’t resolve the long-distance problem and broke up. That was four years ago. Now 28, Kez has never truly moved on from Miller and his promises. She’s learned that he’s engaged to a bartender at the very pub where he’d drunk-dial Kez. She hatches a scheme to crash Miller’s high school reunion in Rochester and, as she tells best friends Regan “Rae” Murphy and Vivian “V” Walters, “see for myself that he’s moved on. That this thing with her is real, not just checking a box in his personal life.” Only then, she claims, can she find closure. Kez wants her besties to come along, so despite their doubts, Rae and V loyally agree. In the hotel bar, Kez meets Jackson “Jax” Jenkins—tall, dark, muscular, tattooed, brimming with confidence, and totally into her. He’s also attending the reunion. When he gets wind of Kez’s plan, he invites her along as his plus-one, giving her the perfect cover to evaluate Miller’s commitment to his intended. Meanwhile, erotic heat builds—and builds and builds—between Kez and Jax, who is ready for much more than just a fling. If the door on Miller closes, maybe another one could open, but first Kez must take a chance and trust again.
In her debut, Dodd runs the risk of making the romance too good to be true. Kez is a “gorgeous” red-haired head-turner, and she already owns her own law firm. Jax is perhaps even more inordinately ideal, and not just physically. His restoration business is both masculine and artsy, and he’s thoughtful and sensitive behind the sometimes-cocky exterior—after a misunderstanding, he sends flowers to Kez with an apology note that makes Rae exclaim, “Seriously? Those arms and that ass come with a poetry option?” He also conveniently happens to live right outside of Charlotte. Fortunately, Dodd gives her heroine a significant flaw in her obsession with the past and dubious logic about needing to gauge Miller’s feelings; Kez didn’t just Google-stalk Miller; she actually hired a private investigator. Additionally, a few misunderstandings, eruptions from Miller and his fiancee (who earns Kez’s sympathy), and other bumps in the road to love also help spice the story with some conflict. And of course, some readers will appreciate the well-crafted wish-fulfillment angle. The dialogue is energetic and funny, and the sex scenes are a plus: lusty, varied, and suggestive but not pornographic.
Low on plausibility but high on entertaining drama, dialogue, and hot romance.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1954614659
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Warren Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A smart, steamy romance.
Tomforde’s sports romance pairs boardroom power plays with dugout drama.
As the youngest and only female owner of a Major League Baseball team, Reese Remington is used to pressure. Even though Reese is the granddaughter of the Windy City Warriors’ former owner, the men around her still question her position; she’ll “most likely have to work twice as hard and make [the] club’s success twice as noticeable to have any hope of being viewed as the right person to operate this team.” It doesn’t help that the franchise is bleeding money, the result of her grandfather’s hands-off approach in the years before his retirement. Reese must use her razor-sharp intelligence and fierce business sense to not only prove herself in a role in which the public is eager to see her fail, but also to make unpopular financial decisions to get the team out of the red. Enter Emmett Montgomery, a former All-Star turned field manager whose priorities lie firmly with people rather than profit. A man devoted to his team and his adopted child, Emmett has long since closed the door on romance, despite gentle nudging from his loved ones. His empathetic team-first mentality puts him immediately at odds with Reese’s pragmatic agenda, and with his contract up at the end of the year, Emmett worries he’ll be on the chopping block if he speaks out too much. Told from the perspectives of the leads, the novel gives equal page time to Reese and Emmett. Their concerns––the scrutiny Reese must endure as a woman in a male-dominated industry, and Emmett’s worries over his contract renewal––are tangible and add a sense of urgency to their every decision. While the novel includes some unavoidable exposition dumps to orient readers, it more than compensates by establishing clear stakes and a sense of momentum from the outset. The narrative successfully introduces credible barriers to the romance, which largely follows recognizable genre beats. The baseball setting is also used effectively, with the season-long arc mirroring the couple’s romantic and professional journeys.
A smart, steamy romance.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781649379795
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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