An enjoyable callback to a historical-romance era when ruthless businessmen became philanthropists and found love.
The owner of a gentleman’s club finds his life disrupted by the sister of an indebted aristocrat.
Guinevere “Ginny” Woodville has a goal: To get the infamous Gabriel “the Reaper” Marchand to forgive the debt her brother, Hogarth, accumulated at his gaming hell, Lucifer’s Fall. All her siblings’ futures depend on Ginny’s ability to see that debt settled. Gabriel is everything she expected—an unscrupulous man who cares only for profit. He counters her request with an offer to cancel her brother’s debt if she spends a night with him, knowing she will reject it. As it turns out, Hogarth also owes money to several other patrons of Lucifer’s Fall, and Gabriel won’t tell Ginny who they are. When Ginny and Gabriel meet again at the boardinghouse where they’re both temporarily living, their combativeness transforms into a mutually useful alliance. As she figures out who her brother’s debts belong to and sets out to cancel them, Gabriel decides to help Ginny partly to protect his reputation for discretion but also because he’s intrigued by her quixotic doggedness. While the first act is reminiscent of many novels in which shabby-genteel women try to save their families from a sibling’s mistakes and meet a devilish rogue, the middle sharpens both protagonists’ distinctive personalities. As the two join forces, their budding attraction smolders. Ginny starts to grasp that her mission might be doomed—but so might her heart, since Gabriel has more depth than she first realized. Gabriel, in turn, decides to protect Ginny from the choices men force on women, even if it comes at the cost of his own financial and emotional well-being. The Grand Palace on Thames—the boardinghouse that connects the novel to previous books in Long’s Palace of Rogues series—provides a familiar scaffold for Gabriel and Ginny’s romance. The last section reverts to an older plot commonplace of redeeming the rogue through humanitarian projects, reminiscent of Lisa Kleypas’ beloved classics.
An enjoyable callback to a historical-romance era when ruthless businessmen became philanthropists and found love.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063464803
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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