A fizzy tale about an entirely inappropriate but entertaining love affair.
A mentally ill woman meets the world’s hottest psychiatrist in this giddy romance.
Twenty-year-old Mercy Kavanaugh has been in and out of mental hospitals since she was abandoned in childhood by her parents. They were members of a religious sect who thought her violent hallucinations, which felt as if she was being skewered with nails and burned with acid, were caused by demonic possession. She and the rest of the psych ward are shaken up by the arrival of Dr. Travis Sutton, a new psychiatrist who, with his tousled hair, jeans, and muscle T-shirts, looks more like a Hugo Boss model than a shrink. Sutton good-naturedly parries Mercy’s defensive snark and soon declares a breakthrough: She’s not suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, as previously diagnosed, but from PTSD caused by the cultic abuse she suffered as a girl. He takes her off antipsychotics, reviving her libido, and applies his signature treatment of cradling her in his arms and soothing her tears after she has nightmares. Coached by her gal pals, Mercy tries seducing Sutton with outrageous sex talk during their sessions and, to make him jealous, a flirtation with a male patient. As she stampedes over Sutton’s weak protestations about transference and his medical license, passionate make-out sessions ensue with much groping and fondling. Alas, their love is threatened by federal regulations that will age her out of the hospital on her 21st birthday and into a halfway house. Decker’s yarn features an ideal lover, a dreamboat who’s fascinated by every wrinkle of the hero’s psyche in addition to her body, set in a glamorized rendition of a mental health facility that’s full of good-looking patients who don’t even seem crazy, just oversexed. The author’s skillful prose plangently evokes Mercy’s loneliness and fear of abandonment in the novel’s opening. (“Following each return to the unit, each searing disappointment, I let go of a little more hope,” Mercy muses of her rejections by foster families. “Once I was all hollowed out, I understood that no one would save me.”) After Dr. Sexy perks her up, though, the writing takes on a salacious energy and cheer. (He: “I have something for you.” She: “Is it a vibrator?”) Readers will root for Mercy’s campaign to undermine the psychiatric profession’s code of ethics.
A fizzy tale about an entirely inappropriate but entertaining love affair.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7329645-2-5
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.
Two people with bad luck in relationships find each other through a popular Reddit thread.
Emma Grant and her best friend, Maddy, are travel nurses, working at hospitals for three-month stints while they see the country. Just a few weeks before they’re set to move to Hawaii, Emma reads a popular “Am I the Asshole” Reddit thread from a Minnesota man who thinks he’s cursed—women he dates find their soulmates after breaking up with him, and the latest one found true love with his best friend! Emma has had a similar experience, which inspires her to DM the man and commiserate. She’s delighted by her witty, lively interactions with software engineer Justin Dahl, and is intrigued when he suggests that if they date each other, maybe they’ll each find their soulmate afterward. Emma upends the Hawaii plan and convinces Maddy to move to Minneapolis for the summer so she can meet Justin in person. The overly complex setup brings Emma and Justin together and the two hit it off, with Justin immediately falling head over heels for Emma. Jimenez then pivots to creating romantic roadblocks and melodramatic subplots centering on each character’s family of origin. Justin’s mother is about to serve six years in prison for embezzlement, which means Justin must move back home to care for his three much younger siblings. Emma was traumatized by her own mother for much of her childhood, left to fend for herself and eventually abandoned in the foster system. When her mother shows up in Minnesota, Emma must face her traumatic childhood and admit that she has prioritized her mother’s well-being over her own. There is little time devoted to Emma’s painful efforts to heal herself enough to accept Justin’s love, which leaves the novel feeling unsatisfying.
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781538704431
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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