Simple and trite.
A reformed playboy settles into married life with his former maid.
Maxim Trevelyan, a London playboy and newly minted Earl of Trevethick, fell in love with Alessia Demachi in the first book of the series, The Mister (2019). Alessia was trafficked from Albania and later kidnapped and rescued by Maxim. This book picks up immediately following those events, with Maxim and Alessia at her family’s home in Albania, planning to marry. The plot focuses on domestic matters: planning the wedding ceremony, securing Alessia's citizenship status, and managing Maxim's problems with the Trevethick estate. The emotional arcs are simplistic and repetitive: Over and over again Maxim wonders how to keep his new wife happy, while Alessia worries that she isn’t beautiful and cultured enough to satisfy such a renowned playboy. His family and former lovers disapprove of the match and try to disrupt the couple's happiness with undermining comments and petty schemes. After the pair returns to London, there is very little of interest to fuel the plot other than Alessia’s sudden determination to find one of the younger girls who was trafficked with her. James’ writing is choppy and discordant, shifting rapidly between narrators with only the difference in point of view—Maxim in first person and Alessia in third—to indicate a change in speaker. Maxim’s voice is uncomfortably banal. Upon seeing his bride on their wedding day, he thinks, “Dude, don’t get emotional.” Even James completists looking for a last glimmer of Fifty Shades of Grey magic are bound to be disappointed.
Simple and trite.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781728290270
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Bloom Books
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.
After purchasing a dilapidated, century-old starship called the Destitute, Torian Razner discovers that the moss covering it is, in fact, a deeply sarcastic sentient computer with abandonment issues.
Torian’s sister, Celise, is dying. Determined to save her life by getting her to a distant planet with air she can breathe, Torian ignores her former captain Amelia Perrosk’s warning that it’s an impossible task (along with any romantic feelings she might have for Amelia). Using the only ionite bars she has to her name, Torian purchases an ancient, moss-covered alien starship that appears to be on its last legs, so to speak. She hardly expected the moss to be a sentient computer or for it to hold a century-old grudge against its former alien captain. Moss quickly proves itself to be acerbic, intelligent, and rightly angry after being having been left behind for 100 years by its former captain. The two form a reluctant and surprising alliance, Torian proving to Moss that not all captains are “dog-turd fungus,” and they both gradually evolve into the best versions of themselves, human or otherwise. It’s obvious from the early pages that Thorne has crafted a story tailored to fans of Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. Falling somewhere between the two, this is a delightful mashup of romance, found family, and a touch of violence as Moss grapples with its feelings about its former captain and the unexpected kindness that Torian shows. Sweet without being overly saccharine, it’s a book for readers who want the adventure that comes with the vastness of outer space without its harsher realities.
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414144
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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