A beautiful, compelling romance celebrating second chances and forgiveness.
A destination wedding might be just the ticket to reuniting a woman with her ex.
Jana Suleiman was always known as a good girl who followed the rules—until five years ago, when a brief but intense fling with Anil Malek led to a broken heart and life as a single mother. Now, she and Anil both live in Toronto and successfully co-parent their daughter, Imani, but Jana is careful to keep an emotional distance from Anil. He’s a wonderful father to their daughter, but he’s still the man who broke her heart. Jana and her extended family, including her mother and daughter, are traveling to Tanzania for a destination wedding in the Serengeti National Park. Once they arrive, she is appalled to discover that Anil will also be a member of the wedding party. Jana’s plans for a relaxing two-week vacation are ruined by Anil’s presence. Suddenly, her private life is once again under intense scrutiny from her colleagues, friends, and extended family on the trip. Jana is a character who is both fierce and tender, determined to do right by herself and her daughter. With the help of the other bridesmaids, she makes a “letting loose” list to help her escape the rut she’s in, but everything keeps bringing her back to Anil. The challenges facing the couple are complex. Jana is righteously angry at the way society has punished her for being a single mother while simultaneously rewarding Anil for being an attentive father. Anil has steadfastly tried to support Jana and Imani, but he doesn’t know how to earn forgiveness for the mistakes of the past. Heron’s novel is an exemplar of the “second chance” romance trope, with Jana and Anil working through layers of misunderstanding before they can trust each other again.
A beautiful, compelling romance celebrating second chances and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781538725450
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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