Royal watchers and tabloid devotees will devour this juicy look behind the gilded curtain of palace life.
Cocks and Morgan, the fashion bloggers known as the Fug Girls, return with the highly anticipated sequel to their regal rom-com, The Royal We (2015).
Nick and Bex, more formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Clarence, have escaped from London and taken refuge in Wigtown, Scotland, where they are posing as local booksellers Margot and Steve. The newlyweds are not only running from their disastrous wedding ceremony—during which rumors of an affair between Bex and Prince Freddie, Nick’s brother, were released to the public by a former friend of Nick's who's a tabloid journalist—but from the resultant wrath of Nick’s grandmother, Queen Eleanor. Both Nick and Bex are uncertain about how to move forward in their marriage following Freddie’s declaration of love for Bex, and they're contemplating never returning home. But when Queen Eleanor concocts a scheme to get them back, they return to their public lives, where they must confront the deepening cracks in their relationships with each other as well as with Freddie and the way history seems to be repeating itself in the palace. It’s clear that the authors are experts on all the juicy rumors about the real British royal family, as they deftly inject recognizable scandals and characteristics from real-life people into a world of their own making. A mystery from the past involving Princess Georgina, the queen’s late sister, mirrors one in the present day of the book and adds more intrigue to the plot, though some readers might find the resultant drama a bit over-the-top. The novel takes place over the course of several years and can feel drawn out as multiple illnesses, pregnancies, scandals, and secrets keep cropping up, but the characters are so compelling that most readers won’t mind spending extra time with them.
Royal watchers and tabloid devotees will devour this juicy look behind the gilded curtain of palace life.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1591-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fun, positively frothy friends-to-lovers romance.
While on her sister’s wedding cruise, a woman enlists her childhood best friend for help as she attempts to woo her longtime crush.
JoJo Burton is bad at love. After she leaves her terrible fiancé, Pearce Richmond, at the altar, she’s convinced she might never settle down. But during her sister’s wedding, which is being held on an eight-day cruise to the Bahamas and Cozumel, she and her family concoct a plan that will help her seduce her recently divorced childhood crush, Finn Turner. The two of them once shared a blindfolded kiss that might have ruined JoJo for all other men, and she’s never forgotten it. But then JoJo’s best friend, Cooper Watts, shows up. Cooper and JoJo were inseparable as children but didn’t talk for years after she got engaged to Pearce. She doesn’t know why he suddenly disappeared on her, but it doesn’t matter—he’s here now, and she needs him to help her get Finn to reenact that long-ago kiss. But after she and Cooper share a cabin, get thrown together for every wedding week activity, and even engage in the classic friendly flirting meant to make another man jealous, JoJo starts to realize that Finn might not be the man she’s been waiting for, after all. Center keeps things light, focusing on humor even when the subject matter veers into family drama. JoJo and Cooper find themselves caught up in the sort of tropes that are catnip for romance fans—he takes care of her when she has a sunburn, for instance, and they participate in a slow-dance contest. As Center reveals in an author’s note at the beginning, “Spoiler: This book will end well.” The destination may not be a surprise, but the journey is a delight.
A fun, positively frothy friends-to-lovers romance.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9781250408051
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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