A bumpy love story with a gorgeous setting and vivid architectural details.
An American woman moves to Italy to restore a villa and meets a handsome architect in this contemporary romance.
Natalie Malone has just purchased a fixer-upper villa on the Amalfi Coast with money from a mysterious benefactor. In the villa’s “former life, it had been known as Pensione Benone, which translated to ‘very good inn.’ She had yet to decide what she would name it, but she liked the idea of quality.” The villa is part of an economic development plan for the hamlet of Zavona, but the program has been struggling. Architect Pietro Indelicato is determined to help the plan succeed, but his father and some cronies on the Economic Development Council are standing in the way. Pietro meets Natalie when she shows up at city hall to get a construction permit. Even though he is unhelpful, Natalie is attracted to him. They meet again when Natalie seeks his professional expertise. They start flirting as they work together and Pietro assists her with tasks at her villa. But the development plan is in trouble. Because of a clause in the contracts, people renovating houses in the community can’t own the dwellings unless satisfactory restoration work is done within six months. With unscrupulous contractors making shoddy repairs, it is becoming increasingly common for investors to suffer huge losses. When part of a house owned by friends of Natalie’s collapses, she finally realizes the serious difficulties she’s facing. Meanwhile, she tries to track down her generous benefactor, and Pietro fights with his father over Zavona’s future. Blades’ tale deftly portrays the beautiful Amalfi Coast, but the romance takes a while to get going. Most of the novel’s first half focuses on Natalie’s seemingly doomed attempt to renovate her villa. The romance feels like a slow burn until it isn’t, with friendly conversations suddenly escalating into making love in a lemon grove and Natalie meeting Pietro’s family. This series of events results in uneven pacing. The only conflict between the lovers is a manufactured misunderstanding, so the romance feels a bit bland compared with the rest of the tale. Still, there’s a great deal of intriguing home renovation information that will appeal to HGTV fans as the author skillfully describes the villa’s design and repairs.
A bumpy love story with a gorgeous setting and vivid architectural details.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64937-208-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
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