A fast read and fun concept suitable for enjoyment year-round.
In this romance, two actors connect on the set of a Christmas movie.
In the small town of Gingerbread Falls, North Dakota, Noelle Butler is ready for Christmas. Young, beautiful, and single, she left the rat race of the city behind to open a popular cafe in her tiny, holiday-loving hometown and is determined to get first place in the window-display contest once again. But Noelle also longs for a special someone, and the Gingerbread Falls dating pool is seriously shallow…until she literally falls into the arms of Carson Stark, a doctor. Noelle and the handsome, sensitive physician quickly form a love connection, but Carson is hiding something important—will his secrecy ruin Noelle’s perfect Christmas? When the cameras stop rolling in the real-life Gingerbread Falls on the set of The Christmas Channel’s newest movie, 27-year-old working actor Carrie Murray (aka Noelle Butler) does her best to avoid Braxton Timothy, Hollywood’s biggest action star, who’s producing the film and playing Carson Stark. Carrie’s well aware of Braxton’s playboy reputation back in Tinseltown, and all she wants is to keep her head down and earn a paycheck on yet another Christmas movie, despite her own aversion to the holiday. But Braxton is persistent, and the town is tiny, so Carrie quickly finds herself catching feelings. Will she finally feel comfortable disclosing her traumatic past to a potential new lover? Mettner crafts two parallel, interdependent stories in a singular novel that’s ideal for those who can’t get enough of Hallmark movies come the holiday season. Carrie is a strong survivor and hero, an actor who doesn’t recognize her own natural talent and strives to keep a low profile despite her ripped-from-the-headlines childhood. But she lands at a crossroads when she realizes her showmance with Braxton might be the real thing. Braxton is not as well developed. He comes across as a little too perfect and evolved (not to mention he tends to explain Carrie’s own feelings to her) and gives a cutesy nickname to his own anatomy.
A fast read and fun concept suitable for enjoyment year-round.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Breaking Night Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 fun, positively frothy friends-to-lovers romance.
While on her sister’s wedding cruise, a woman enlists her childhood best friend for help as she attempts to woo her longtime crush.
JoJo Burton is bad at love. After she leaves her terrible fiancé, Pearce Richmond, at the altar, she’s convinced she might never settle down. But during her sister’s wedding, which is being held on an eight-day cruise to the Bahamas and Cozumel, she and her family concoct a plan that will help her seduce her recently divorced childhood crush, Finn Turner. The two of them once shared a blindfolded kiss that might have ruined JoJo for all other men, and she’s never forgotten it. But then JoJo’s best friend, Cooper Watts, shows up. Cooper and JoJo were inseparable as children but didn’t talk for years after she got engaged to Pearce. She doesn’t know why he suddenly disappeared on her, but it doesn’t matter—he’s here now, and she needs him to help her get Finn to reenact that long-ago kiss. But after she and Cooper share a cabin, get thrown together for every wedding week activity, and even engage in the classic friendly flirting meant to make another man jealous, JoJo starts to realize that Finn might not be the man she’s been waiting for, after all. Center keeps things light, focusing on humor even when the subject matter veers into family drama. JoJo and Cooper find themselves caught up in the sort of tropes that are catnip for romance fans—he takes care of her when she has a sunburn, for instance, and they participate in a slow-dance contest. As Center reveals in an author’s note at the beginning, “Spoiler: This book will end well.” The destination may not be a surprise, but the journey is a delight.
A fun, positively frothy friends-to-lovers romance.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9781250408051
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 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.
