A tepid romance in an indulgent setting.
Beneath the Cancun sun, a free-spirited travel writer must teach a workaholic, blue-collar billionaire the art of relaxation.
Nearly two decades ago, 18-year-old Noah Sinclair was put in charge of his younger siblings by his mother's dying wish. Now his siblings are all adults, forging their own lives and finding love, and Noah’s brother Owen is determined to stage an intervention to get Noah to take some time off. To do so, he’s enlisted the help of family friend Andie Lawrence. It’s Andie’s job to spend two weeks in Cancun writing a travel story for her blog while also covertly coaxing Noah to stop checking his email and enjoy the vacation his siblings bought him for Christmas. Complications arise as Andie realizes her childhood crush on Noah isn’t exactly gone and Noah still can’t seem to remember her name. Though this is certainly a romance, with Andie playing the role of the off-limits best friend of Noah’s little brother, the writing about Cancun is intense in its aspirational, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous level of detail. There are private jets, picturesque resorts, and bejeweled bracelets. It’s a fantasy that Andie and Noah give in to at the slightest nudge, quickly embarking on a vacation fling, but the reality is that both are masking grief: Noah with his demanding work schedule and Andie with her carefree, untouchable attitude. The conflict is nonexistent since the will-they-won’t-they hand-wringing never feels serious enough to keep Noah and Andie truly apart. It’s a surefire happy ending without any major stakes. The large Sinclair family is consistently involved in setting the main characters up; this will delight fans of Scott's Accidental Billionaires series, though it may feel overwhelming to new readers.
A tepid romance in an indulgent setting.Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1890-6
Page Count: 251
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.
Two struggling authors spend the summer writing and falling in love in a quaint beach town.
January Andrews has just arrived in the small town of North Bear Shores with some serious baggage. Her father has been dead for a year, but she still hasn’t come to terms with what she found out at his funeral—he had been cheating on her mother for years. January plans to spend the summer cleaning out and selling the house her father and “That Woman” lived in together. But she’s also a down-on-her-luck author facing writer’s block, and she no longer believes in the happily-ever-after she’s made the benchmark of her work. Her steadily dwindling bank account, though, is a daily reminder that she must sell her next book, and fast. Serendipitously, she discovers that her new next-door neighbor is Augustus Everett, the darling of the literary fiction set and her former college rival/crush. Gus also happens to be struggling with his next book (and some serious trauma that unfolds throughout the novel). Though the two get off to a rocky start, they soon make a bet: Gus will try to write a romance novel, and January will attempt “bleak literary fiction.” They spend the summer teaching each other the art of their own genres—January takes Gus on a romantic outing to the local carnival; Gus takes January to the burned-down remains of a former cult—and they both process their own grief, loss, and trauma through this experiment. There are more than enough steamy scenes to sustain the slow-burn romance, and smart commentary on the placement and purpose of “women’s fiction” joins with crucial conversations about mental health to add multiple intriguing layers to the plot.
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0673-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Jove/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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