A heartwarming tale of trust and absolution from a skilled novelist.
A celebrity chef and the owner of a restaurant chain clash as co-hosts of a television cooking show but are required to fake date to save their reputations.
Nina Lyon is a James Beard Award–winning chef who's well known in the Los Angeles food world. Leo O’Donnell, who has an MBA, is the owner of Vinny’s, a chain of family-friendly restaurants started by his father. Both signed on to become hosts of The Next Cooking Champ! to help boost the visibility of their restaurants. But over the past three seasons, Nina’s honest critiques have earned her the nickname “Nasty Nina,” and her falling popularity has caused her to close two of her restaurants. Despite Leo’s genial persona, their acrimonious TV exchanges are not endearing them to anyone, and Leo’s businesses are also shuttering. Nina’s publicist advises them to conduct a showmance, fake date each other to boost their popularity. But enemies pretending to be lovers is difficult to pull off convincingly, and their online fans alternately laud them and savage them. Trust is slow to grow between them, but eventually it is only with each other that they can relax and truly be themselves. Their acceptance of each other as they truly are allows them to give each other space to be their best selves. After his father’s death, Leo took charge of growing the business and took on the emotional burden as head of family so zealously that it has become his life and has given him low self-esteem, crippling anxiety, and panic attacks. La Rosa sensitively shows Leo’s work on his mental health recovery. Nina has lost her focus as an innovative chef, and the closure of her last restaurant is inevitable. La Rosa convincingly shows how Nina recovers her passion for food and the story she wants to tell as a chef while finding a way to empower other women in the culinary world.
A heartwarming tale of trust and absolution from a skilled novelist.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-335-50634-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HQN
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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 deep and moving portrayal of first love.
Two college students rekindle their relationship as they unravel the truth behind their breakup.
On the outside, college senior Bennett Reiner has it all. A goalie for Waterfell University’s hockey team, he lives with a group of friends in a luxurious off-campus house. He and his best friend, Rhys Koteskiy, have fathers who are retired hockey legends. But on the inside, he’s falling apart. Struggling with OCD, a shaky friendship with Rhys, and second thoughts about pursuing a future in hockey, the only thing keeping Bennett afloat is also the one thing breaking his heart: Paloma Blake. All dyed-hair and attitude, Paloma has built a bad reputation on the hockey scene since their relationship ended freshman year—but Bennett knows the real P. Underneath her promiscuous facade lies a scared and lonely girl running from a childhood of abuse. When they were together, it seemed like their romance was perfect, until Paloma broke it off without warning. Since then, Bennett has run to Paloma’s side whenever she needed him, whether she was drunk, lonely, or hurting, and now he’s determined to win her back. For Bennett, Paloma is his antidote, the cure for his compulsions; for Paloma, Bennett is her protector, her safe space. And though Paloma yearns to be with Bennett again, she’s not sure she’s willing to open old wounds and reveal the truth about her painful past. In the third installment of the Undone series, Corinne spotlights familiar characters as they navigate trauma, heartbreak, and first love. Bennett and Paloma’s relationship is raw and vulnerable, and their journey of relinquishing control is both necessary and inevitable. Their romance evolves as they open up to one another, and in return, the reader is rewarded with a love story that’s as lyrical, evocative, and emotional as poetry.
A deep and moving portrayal of first love.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781668219423
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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