A delightfully romantic tale that hits all the right Christmas notes.
In this novel, a single mother and an itinerant military bachelor get to know each other during one eventful holiday season.
Ava is well aware that she lives next door to an unusually attractive Navy officer. She has never done more than wave at him in passing, and that’s fine, because she’s totally focused on caring for her young son, who has health problems. She cannot afford to get distracted by something as frivolous as a romance. But then one day, when she’s bringing her son, Nicholas, home from school, her handsome neighbor, Harris, is building a snowman in his yard. A meddling female friend knew what time Ava would be returning home with Nicholas and concocted a reason why she needed Harris to construct a snowman. As expected, the young boy is desperate to join the fun. All it takes is one conversation between Harris and Ava, and everything begins to change. When Nicholas goes to his father’s house for Christmas, Harris and Ava have the holiday break to enjoy each other’s company. It will be a quick tryst before Nicholas returns and Harris relocates for his next assignment. Though wildly attracted to each other, when they begin to connect on a deeper level, they realize all the reasons why their relationship can never work. Told alternately from Harris’ and Ava’s perspectives, the story pokes fun at how easy it is to create a romance simply by participating in trite activities during the holiday season. At the same time, Aster cleverly utilizes each of these tropes to strengthen Ava and Harris’ attachment to each other. From snowball fights and ice skating to decorating trees and baking Christmas treats, no holiday-season milestone is neglected. Despite the lighthearted tone, the issues that Ava faces as the mother of an ill child are deep and complex, but the author handles them with grace and insight. Replete with witty banter, steamy sex scenes, and oodles of Christmas cheer, the book is engaging and compulsively readable. Despite the story’s clichéd setup and a few cheesy lines, Aster’s openly formulaic approach helps the novel achieve exactly what it set out to do.
A delightfully romantic tale that hits all the right Christmas notes.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-4916-6261-6
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
