One strong main character can’t save the contrived plot or underwhelming love interest.
A middle school vice principal joins a six-week Mars simulation for a chance to win $500,000 for her school.
Brianna Rogers has been a chronic underachiever compared to her high-powered siblings. She loves kids but drifted through several jobs as a teacher and counselor before finally landing a position as a vice principal at a Houston middle school. She clashes with her principal, a difficult and condescending man. What’s worse is that the most attractive teacher at the school, Roman Major, is the principal’s son. Roman also applied for the vice principal job, and she suspects that’s why their interactions are chilly and adversarial. Then, in the final weeks of the school year, she discovers that the principal redirected the money meant to renovate the library into a football field upgrade. Brianna is outraged but helpless to do anything about it, until she decides to join four of her colleagues, including Roman, on a six-week-long NASA Mars simulation they’ve been recruited for. There are cash rewards for individual teachers, but Brianna is more interested in the $500,000 grant the school will win if the team successfully completes the simulation. The award could fund the library upgrade without the principal’s interference. Once Brianna and Roman enter the simulation, she begins to suspect that Roman was planted on the team by his father to sabotage their progress and prevent them from saving the library. Brianna’s journey is both professional and personal. She struggles with the expectation that she will keep herself separate from her colleagues since she’s a supervisor. She must learn to trust her own instincts, and eventually decides Roman is not there to ruin their chances of winning the grant. In comparison, Roman is underdeveloped to the point of feeling like an afterthought. There is little tension or conflict outside of the simulation itself, and the resolution is simple and uncomplicated.
One strong main character can’t save the contrived plot or underwhelming love interest.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593640241
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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