A beloved character takes the helm in a book that leads the series into uncharted waters.
A fallen angel is reunited with his true love.
After falling in love with a human woman, the archangel Lassiter was punished by the Creator. He was cast out of heaven and sent to Caldwell, New York, home of the vampire warriors known as the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Over the course of the last 10 books, Lassiter evolved from a flamboyant, annoying sidekick to a trusted member of the Brotherhood family, even taking on the important mystical role of Scribe Virgin. At the end of the previous novel in the series, Lover Arisen (2022), Lassiter lost his halo after making a personal sacrifice to a demon which enabled the return of Lash, the evil son of the Omega. Overcome with shame and regret, Lassiter exiled himself to a remote Colorado town. Lassiter doesn’t remain alone for long; too many people—the Black Dagger warriors, his archangel cousins, and Rahvyn, a mysterious being who can jump through time—are prepared to drag him kicking and screaming back to Caldwell. Rahvyn is the lover he thought had died. At first, he assumes she's a hallucination, but when he learns she was lost in time, he decides not to squander their second chance at love. Lassiter and Rahvyn share their painful pasts and dark secrets with each other, which allows them to form a lasting bond. Their reunion plays second fiddle to the main event, though: Lash's revival of the war against the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Almost frenetic in its pacing, the novel pits Lassiter and his vampire brethren against the rising, and perhaps unbeatable, powers of evil. A shocking twist at the end displays Ward’s willingness to boldly reinvent the long-running series, leaving open fascinating new pathways for future books.
A beloved character takes the helm in a book that leads the series into uncharted waters.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781982180027
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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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