An engaging novel that seamlessly weaves together an exploration of love, the challenges of sobriety, and robust sex.
A romance writer reconnects with her exes and gets to know her best friend’s brother—her landlord—in this steamy forced-proximity romance.
Sophie Lyon is a pansexual published romance author working on her second book, but she has a major case of writer’s block. After a night out with her best friend, Poppy, a video of Sophie—extremely drunk at a karaoke mic—goes viral, showing her wild-eyed and sobbing, proclaiming that she’s never been in love. In a disastrous morning after, she finds out about her drunken proclamation, the existence of the video, and that people in the comments have recognized her, and in her extremely hungover state, she pukes all over Poppy’s brother Dash, her landlord. (Considering that they live in Hollywood, it seems only natural that Dash and Poppy are part of a movie dynasty, and Dash is an actor Sophie’s had a crush on since she was a teenager.) Dash suggests she post a response video on TikTok, so she decides to meet with all her exes, some male and some female, to talk about why their relationships didn’t work out. And so she does, posting videos about what she finds out about herself and her relationships. Meanwhile, Sophie and Dash are physically drawn to each other, but because of Dash’s struggles with sobriety, he doesn’t feel like he can be in a relationship. Secrets, family complications, social media repercussions, agony over mistakes, the difficulty of establishing new emotional pathways, and sex are all part of this surprisingly sweet story that embraces characters’ flaws as part of the whole package that makes up an individual.
An engaging novel that seamlessly weaves together an exploration of love, the challenges of sobriety, and robust sex.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781335458117
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Canary Street Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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