An interesting ghost story outshines a tepid romance.
A woman relocates, only to discover that her new home is haunted.
The small coastal community of Boneyard Key, Florida, is reputed to be one of the most haunted places in America. In 1897, a hurricane devastated the town, and the small group of survivors who stayed to rebuild found they could communicate with the ghosts of people who were killed in the storm. When Cassie Rutherford is priced out of the Orlando housing market, she looks further afield and feels lucky to have found a great deal on a house overlooking the water in Boneyard Key. She assumes the local businesses like Nick Royer’s coffee shop, Hallowed Grounds, are just leaning into the mythology for tourists, but she quickly learns the locals really believe in ghosts. After Cassie moves in, her laptop won’t take a charge in the house (“like an electricity vampire had stolen in during the night”) and half the outlets don’t seem to work at all, so she starts working from Nick’s coffee shop. He reveals that she’s the proud owner of Hawkins House, the most haunted place in town, plagued by the ghost of Sarah Hawkins, a woman whose husband died in mysterious circumstances and who chased school kids off her property until her death in the 1940s. Cassie laughs it off until Sarah’s ghost starts communicating with her through the magnetic poetry on her fridge and a local ghost hunter assures her Sarah’s spirit is friendly. Meanwhile, Cassie and Nick’s flirtatious banter quickly evolves into casual dating. The first time he enters her house, though, things go sideways: They have a strange, aggressive argument, and Sarah’s ghost uses the magnets to urge Cassie to “get him out.” DeLuca has a keen eye for describing life in a small tourist town with a quirky cast of characters, but her plotting is predictable. Cassie and Nick are two nice people who can’t be together until they’ve (literally!) put old ghosts to rest.
An interesting ghost story outshines a tepid romance.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780593641217
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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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