Holiday hijinks and fake dating make Winfrey’s romantic comedy a cozy classic.
A 30-something magazine columnist pretends to be her homesteading twin sister in Winfrey’s Christmas caper.
Laurel Grant is a hot mess—or, at least, the Old Laurel was. Six months ago, the New Laurel Grant officially left the “Hot Mess Express” and now lives a productive life as a columnist for Buckeye State of Mind, a local Ohio magazine. There, she writes about her scenic life running a nearby farm with her doting husband and two kids, and her boss, Gilbert, is none the wiser that he’s reading one giant lie. Well, more a stretch of the truth: Laurel doesn’t have a husband or kids, but Meadow Rise Farm does exist, and Laurel does work there…as the social media manager. The farm actually belongs to her twin sister, Holly, and her husband, Darius, who make homemade soap and cinnamon rolls and are the complete opposites of the free-wheeling, scatterbrained Laurel. But when Gilbert, heartbroken that his wife has left him for their accountant, invites himself to the farm for the traditional Christmas Eve Eve dinner, Laurel enlists her sister to help keep her precarious ruse afloat. At the farm, she’s convinced she can play the role of loving wife and mother to her sister’s family, until Holly reveals that Laurel will be fake-married to their other holiday guest, Max Beckett. Max is Laurel’s self-proclaimed nemesis and a professional grump—how can she pretend to be married to someone she completely loathes? However, when a blizzard traps the Grants, Max, and Gilbert in one throw-pillow-heavy farmhouse, Laurel realizes she may not hate Max or a well-balanced life as much as she imagined. In Winfrey’s latest rom-com, opposites attract amid festive holiday fun. Max and Laurel are quintessential enemies to lovers—“You yourself are a headache designed expressly for me”—and Gilbert excels in his role of pitiful and fatherly comic relief. Winfrey mixes up a tale of tenderness, mischief, and friendship as inviting as your favorite Hallmark movie.
Holiday hijinks and fake dating make Winfrey’s romantic comedy a cozy classic.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780593638361
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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