An unflinchingly honest romance.
Two bakers on opposite sides of a longtime family feud must set aside their differences for a satisfying ending.
Avital Cohen rarely experiences life without pain these days. Dealing with a condition known as interstitial cystitis while managing Best Babka in Brooklyn, her family's successful kosher bakery, she's hanging on by a thread. Enter Ethan Lippmann, who shows up to interview for a new position at Best Babka with unending positivity and a distractingly attractive everything to boot. Ethan might seem like just the right person to help Avital, but it turns out that his motives are a little less than altruistic. He's taken the job at the direction of his grandfather, who had a falling out with Avital's grandfather years ago—and is still driven to take down his former partner in kosher baked goods at any cost. As far as the Cohens are concerned, the Lippmanns are to blame for that legendary rift between their families. What's more, Avital doesn't know that the new guy she's working next to in tight quarters is the heir to Best Babka's biggest competitor. When a mandatory fire safety inspection starts to loom, demanding the two of them work late into the night, Ethan offers to take more responsibility off Avital's plate so she can prioritize her health. Suddenly, Avital begins to wonder why she's so motivated to keep this handsome stranger at arm's length when she could be letting him get closer instead. Meltzer's latest novel follows a vulnerable, authentic journey about learning to navigate pain of all dimensions—individual and generational—and the boundaries people can set for themselves while also advocating for others who might not be capable of speaking up for themselves. Avital and Ethan approach their steadily deepening relationship with understanding and maturity, learning to embrace one another for who they truly are without caveats. In fact, the only thing that might be missing from this sweet story is a recipe for that pumpkin spice babka.
An unflinchingly honest romance.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9780778334408
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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