An enticing mélange of swooning, sports, and STEM.
A wrong number leads to romance between rival data analysts for a baseball team.
As a woman working in the male-dominated world of professional baseball, Emmy Jameson mostly keeps her colleagues at a distance and focuses on the work. She’s up for a senior analyst position against her work nemesis, former baseball player Gabe Olson, and is determined to get the job. When she receives a text from an unknown number saying, “Last night was fun,” she responds and soon realizes the texter was given a fake number at the bar that just happened to be hers. As the pair keep messaging, their texts become increasingly flirtatious and vulnerable and are a bright spot for Emmy each day. In need of a date to her sister’s destination Cancún wedding, she decides to take the risk and invite her mystery man…only to discover it’s someone she already knows: Gabe, who is equally stunned. At first it’s difficult to pair in her mind the perfect man in her phone with the frustrating coworker in the next cubicle, but as they continue to open up to each other, she realizes the odds are favorable that she found the one for her. The banter between Emmy and Gabe is top-notch, and they seamlessly shift between fun flirtations and heartfelt support. Their careers and backgrounds that drew them to this field add extra interest and create meaningful moments of tension. Other side plots feel more like filler, and with the story told solely from Emmy’s perspective, some elements of Gabe’s characterization feel lacking. Still, their connection is strong, and their love story is filled with charm.
An enticing mélange of swooning, sports, and STEM.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9780063420366
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.
A heartbroken man lusts after his therapist while seeking revenge on a drug kingpin and his enforcer.
Mitch Haskell’s wife, Angela, died two years ago of an apparent suicide, but Mitch has always believed the scene was staged. Certainly, she would never have willingly left their young son, Andrew, behind. Consumed with a thirst for vengeance, Mitch—a former Marine and undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and currently a police detective—is struggling with alcohol dependency and uncontrolled rage. Andrew is living with his in-laws, who are making not-so-subtle suggestions that they might apply for permanent guardianship if Mitch can’t get it together. So his boss and best friend, John Bowie, mandates that he go into therapy, which puts him in the path of sexy Dr. Dylan Reede. Within a few days, Mitch makes a connection between two new murders and the death of his former partner; finds a big clue that points to the truth about Angela’s death; goes undercover as a homeless man; takes on a vicious drug cartel; and obnoxiously bullies Dylan with a charm offensive that leads them inevitably to bed. While Mitch seems to lean into the stereotype of the ex-soldier/cop with deeply buried trauma who believes that the ends justify the means—at least in law enforcement—Dylan offers the strength and sweetness to help him start breaking down his walls, allowing herself to be vulnerable in turn. Is passionate sex enough to ground a relationship and a family for the long term? For these characters, and the breakneck speed of this thriller, it’s as good a foundation as any.
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781538743027
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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