This debut romance ticks all the boxes of a must-read, with plenty of bite giving it edge.
Opposites become enemies and then friends and finally lovers in this delightful, trope-filled contemporary romance debut.
Aspiring (and failing) comedian Arianna Sloane doesn't do commitment. In fact, she actively avoids it. She has a strict rule when it comes to her hookups to never stay the night. Josh Kestenberg is in love with love, a chef with grand professional ambitions who also dreams of settling down and serving his eventual soul mate breakfast in bed. Ari and Josh are like oil and water, and it's dislike at first sight. Underscoring their mutual hatred is the bombshell revelation that they're both sleeping with the same woman, who happens to be Ari's roommate. Talk about awkward. For years, Ari and Josh keep falling into each other's orbit, with each meeting more disastrous than the next, until they reunite when they're both at their lowest. Misery seems to make great company, and instead of bickering, they wind up bonding. Supportive texts turn into late-night phone calls and eventually graduate to cathartic movie marathons. The way their friendship blooms is slow and sweet and subtle, and it makes their inevitable romance happen almost seamlessly. The snarky banter between them eventually softens as Ari and Josh allow themselves to be vulnerable; it's rare to find such a perfect balance of funny and emotional scenes without either one overpowering the other. Goldbeck is clearly a writer to watch, creating and building characters that feel like people you've known and loved rather than caricatures dropped into a scene for the sake of a punchline or plot beat. Ari and Josh are thoughtfully written, layered with histories and memories that have molded their contemporary personalities.
This debut romance ticks all the boxes of a must-read, with plenty of bite giving it edge.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780593448120
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
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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