A debut novel overstuffed with everything except a persuasive romance.
A young single mother falls in love with an injured major league pitcher.
Angel Gomez is just weeks away from her goal of completing the nursing program that will allow her to make a better life for herself and her 7-year-old son, Jose. When Jose has an asthma attack, a handsome stranger helps keep him calm. That night, Angel meets the good Samaritan again while she's tending bar at a local hipster spot and learns that he's Caleb "The Duke" Lewis—sports celebrity and known playboy. Duke has been hiding the full extent of an ankle injury from his coaches, hoping a miracle will keep him on the Yankees roster for the upcoming season. He’s been visiting the clinic where Angel works to receive dubious, under-the-table treatments from a sketchy doctor there—the same doctor who's sexually harassing Angel. When the paparazzi spy Duke at the clinic, he begs Angel to give him a believable pretext for being there by pretending to be his girlfriend. Angel is a likable character striving to do the right thing, and she values her family and her community more than Duke’s fame and money. Her character is the highlight of this novel by reality TV star–turned-author Lozada. However, the sheer number of wildly outlandish subplots—including implausible financial shenanigans, cheating friends, a vengeful ex with a sex tape, a blackmail plot and a murder mystery—distracts from the underdeveloped romance between Angel and Duke. Even the title is a misnomer, since their only real “date” is such an unmitigated disaster that any friend of Angel’s would have advised her never to speak to Duke again.
A debut novel overstuffed with everything except a persuasive romance.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20488-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
With characters you care for, a smooth, engaging plot and an interesting reflection on values and success, romance/women’s...
Sonnet Romano has spent her adult years working hard to make a name for herself out in the real world, far away from her idyllic hometown, Willow Lake. But when life takes some unexpected turns, she may just realize that everything she’s been looking for is right back where she started.
Sonnet has checked off most of the big boxes on her "must-do-before-age-thirty" list, and she’s over-the-moon about her life in Manhattan, her job with UNESCO and the opportunities on the horizon from winning a prestigious international program fellowship. But everything comes to a screeching halt when she learns her newly married mother—who had Sonnet as a teenager and raised her as a single mom—is pregnant and sick. Forsaking the fellowship, Sonnet moves back to Willow Lake to be with her mother, risking disapproval from her father, who’s running for the U.S. Senate, and her fledgling boyfriend, who’s working on her father’s campaign. She accepts a job on a reality show being shot in the town, featuring an infamous female rapper and bunch of inner-city kids, and learns that her estranged best friend has been hired as the lead cameraman. Sonnet and Zach have been friends forever, but he is part of her past, and they are on different paths in life. Despite a sizzling newfound attraction between them, she wants her mom to get well, the baby to be born and the show to be wrapped, so she can get back to the city and her own fast track to the successful, prestigious future she’s always worked toward. But slowing down has a funny way of forcing Sonnet to take stock, and maybe her idea of a perfect life will alter with a little help from the old and new important people in her life and the picture-perfect town she grew up in.
With characters you care for, a smooth, engaging plot and an interesting reflection on values and success, romance/women’s fiction favorite Wiggs sends up another charming winner in the Lakeshore Chronicles series.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1384-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Balancing emotion, humor, and a redemptive theme, Higgins hits all the right notes with precision, perception, and panache.
Years after escaping her tiny Maine community and completely reinventing herself, Nora Stuart is coming home to heal from an accident, determined to forge new connections, especially with her distant mother and angry niece.
Nora grew up on a tiny Maine island and suffered her father’s abandonment, becoming an overweight, miserable adolescent, scorned by classmates and, even more devastating, by her beautiful younger sister. But when she wins a coveted scholarship, she transforms her life, shedding the weight and gaining a medical degree. She settles into an exciting life in Boston until tragedy strikes and a shaken Nora is surviving but not thriving. After she’s hit by a van, she decides to go back home to Maine to heal—both physically and psychologically—knowing it won’t be easy, since her relationship with the island and many of its residents is, well, complicated. This includes Luke Fletcher, her biggest rival for the scholarship and the island's favored son. It also includes her mother—an almost comically laconic Mainer who can barely muster a conversation with Nora but coos at her pet bird and offers “hug therapy” to wounded souls—and her niece, Poe, daughter of the aforementioned sister, who is now serving time. One friend and ally, however, is Luke’s twin, Sullivan, whose daughter, Audrey, has weight issues Nora can relate to. Nora steps in to help at the community clinic, tries to break through her mother’s prickly exterior, helps Poe and Audrey find common ground, and makes new friendships while tightening some old ones, but old and new resentments rise to the surface, too. Nora has lots to unpack and sift through, but figuring out who she is and wants to be is a powerful, entertaining journey.
Balancing emotion, humor, and a redemptive theme, Higgins hits all the right notes with precision, perception, and panache.Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-488-02926-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harlequin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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