A charming story that could have used a bit more magic.
When a potter meets a handsome stranger with amnesia, she wonders if she’s responsible for conjuring him up.
Faye Kaplan is no stranger to fresh starts. After an engagement failed disastrously and she quit her full-time job as a lawyer, she decided to embrace her second chance at life by opening a pottery business in Woodstock, New York. Despite a much-needed change of scenery and a supportive community of friends, the one thing she’s still missing is romance. After another singles event turns up no potential dates and then, on her way home, Faye discovers antisemitic flyers covering her neighborhood, she reaches for what has always been a comfort to her in times of stress: pottery. Drunkenly making a golem to guard herself feels like the right idea, especially when she molds him with all the traits her dream man would have. The next day, still nursing a hangover, Faye runs into a handsome guy—quite literally, with her bike, knocking him to the ground. By the time the stranger wakes up in the emergency room, he can’t remember who he is or anything about himself. Feeling guilty and responsible for his current predicament, Faye invites the man to stay with her until he gets his memory back, but she can’t shake the growing sense that his arrival in town might just be connected to her clay-made creation. Meltzer’s latest combines endearing characters, magical realism, and much harsher topics, but these elements often feel less than well integrated, and the magic seems more fantastical in premise than execution. The author’s trademark humor provides some much-needed levity, but the central romance isn’t given as much time as it needs to fully flourish, especially given the hero’s amnesia.
A charming story that could have used a bit more magic.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780778334415
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
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
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