A sweet romance with a very slow burn.
A football player who owns a cupcake shop unexpectedly goes viral and deals with complicated feelings for his best friend’s sister.
August Hodges may be a football star, but he’s happy to stay behind the scenes when it comes to Sugar Blitz, the cupcake shop he runs with Donovan Dell and Nicholas Connors, his best friends and fellow football players. But when he’s caught on camera defending cupcakes and women and the appropriateness of football players owning a bakery to some sexist bros, that all changes. Unsurprisingly, women love a football player with a feminist side. Now, he’s known as SugarBae, and he can’t escape the crowds that come into the shop to meet him. With Sugar Blitz opening a new location, August’s partners know they need to capitalize on his 15 minutes of fame, so Donovan wants to hire his little sister, Sloane Dell, to manage their social media. What Donovan doesn’t know is that August and Sloane have a complicated romantic past that led to a broken heart for Sloane; she has no intention of spending her work hours around August, or riding her brother’s coattails, but spearheading a social media campaign for an up-and-coming company could help her get the job of her dreams. She agrees to help out, which means she’s now spending lots of time taking videos of August—and realizing that her feelings for him never really went away. The more time they spend together, the harder it is for them to deny their feelings for each other, but they’ll have to figure out if they’re ready to be vulnerable enough to take a second shot at love. August is a picture-perfect romantic hero—a football player who owns a cupcake shop and is secure in his masculinity. The obstacles in Sloane and August’s way never feel insurmountable, though—there’s a gentrification plot line, in particular, that feels underbaked—and their journey toward a happily-ever-after doesn’t always feel urgent.
A sweet romance with a very slow burn.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781250801876
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
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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