A gripping, cozy drama about the careers and lives of teachers.
Three educators at different points in their careers navigate life and work in a small town in Culbertson’s novel.
After an entitled parent accosts her in her prep school’s parking lot (“he shoved me into my car door and split open my forehead”), 45-year-old Chelsea Garden flees her life and 12-year teaching career in the San Francisco Bay Area for her hometown of Imperial Flats in Northern California. For Chelsea, Imperial Flats holds a lifetime of memories that have haunted her since she left, including an antagonistic relationship with her mother and a not-quite romance with her best friend and first love, Evan Dawkins. Failed musician Evan has moved home to care for his ailing father and teach music at the high school that both he and Chelsea attended. A chance meeting at the local supermarket reignites the spark between the two educators, and they attempt to reconstruct their relationship while navigating the complications of middle age, including the presence of Evan’s 9-year-old daughter. Meanwhile, the school principal, Nora Delgado, is feeling the weight of a decades-long career and coping with her recent divorce. When a dedicated but burned-out English teacher resigns from the high school, Nora offers Chelsea a job as a long-term substitute, and the lives of the three lead characters become ever more entwined. Written by a career educator, this story offers a rare glimpse into the complex lives of teachers, engaging readers in a middle-aged coming-home narrative and inviting them to reflect on the struggles faced by contemporary teachers nationwide. Culbertson’s prose is enthralling without being melodramatic and witty without being overly lighthearted. Every character is lovingly constructed with empathy and imbued with complexity, making them relatable and likable. Readers will get lost in the story and come away having learned a few of the hard lessons that our teachers were trying to impart all along.
A gripping, cozy drama about the careers and lives of teachers.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9781960573438
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Sibylline Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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: today
A smart, steamy romance.
Tomforde’s sports romance pairs boardroom power plays with dugout drama.
As the youngest and only female owner of a Major League Baseball team, Reese Remington is used to pressure. Even though Reese is the granddaughter of the Windy City Warriors’ former owner, the men around her still question her position; she’ll “most likely have to work twice as hard and make [the] club’s success twice as noticeable to have any hope of being viewed as the right person to operate this team.” It doesn’t help that the franchise is bleeding money, the result of her grandfather’s hands-off approach in the years before his retirement. Reese must use her razor-sharp intelligence and fierce business sense to not only prove herself in a role in which the public is eager to see her fail, but also to make unpopular financial decisions to get the team out of the red. Enter Emmett Montgomery, a former All-Star turned field manager whose priorities lie firmly with people rather than profit. A man devoted to his team and his adopted child, Emmett has long since closed the door on romance, despite gentle nudging from his loved ones. His empathetic team-first mentality puts him immediately at odds with Reese’s pragmatic agenda, and with his contract up at the end of the year, Emmett worries he’ll be on the chopping block if he speaks out too much. Told from the perspectives of the leads, the novel gives equal page time to Reese and Emmett. Their concerns––the scrutiny Reese must endure as a woman in a male-dominated industry, and Emmett’s worries over his contract renewal––are tangible and add a sense of urgency to their every decision. While the novel includes some unavoidable exposition dumps to orient readers, it more than compensates by establishing clear stakes and a sense of momentum from the outset. The narrative successfully introduces credible barriers to the romance, which largely follows recognizable genre beats. The baseball setting is also used effectively, with the season-long arc mirroring the couple’s romantic and professional journeys.
A smart, steamy romance.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781649379795
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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