Poor pacing and a jam-packed plot leave little time for romance.
Australian academic rivals use a loophole to land the same job.
Sadie Shaw and Jonah Fisher have been clashing since they were freshmen in college. Both are part of Sydney’s academic precariat, adjuncts who cobble together jobs teaching English until they can land full-time positions. Now in their early 30s, they have been housemates for the past eight years, living with others in a large six-bedroom share house. When the perfect position for both of them is listed in Hobart, each has personal reasons for wanting the job. Sadie wants financial independence and distance from her supportive but smothering older sister, Chess. Jonah wants to be closer to his sister, Fiona, who’s going through a brutal divorce. Sadie lands the job, but the contract outlines a benefit called “partner hire,” which compels the university to find work for a qualified spouse. Feeling guilty, Sadie convinces Jonah they should get married. After all, they have the same address, and plenty of people have observed their lustful dynamic. After a lengthy exposition of the scheme’s logistics, Sadie and Jonah finally arrive in Hobart. The plot is driven by describing their workload and clashes with the administration’s restructuring team, while the emotional heart of the book is in their relationships with their siblings. Sadie has a huge fight with Chess before the wedding, and her grief, guilt, and attempts to fix the rift are the basis of her character arc. Jonah and his sister learn to love and care for each other away from the quelling influence of their father. The romance plot is lackluster, a footnote to the lovingly detailed minutiae of the workings of the Australian university system.
Poor pacing and a jam-packed plot leave little time for romance.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781668092330
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 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
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
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