A gratifying romance between kind, confident, deserving leads.
A single mom reconnects with her secret high school crush, 25 years after graduation.
After years in a controlling marriage, followed by drawn-out, bitter divorce proceedings, nurse anesthetist Janae Sanders has finally found peace and receives love and support from her best friends in the “Savvy, Sexy, and Single Club.” When former NBA star turned educator Adam Henderson returns to their small Pennsylvania town, old feelings come rushing back, but Janae has no time for romance—not when her 15-year-old son’s beloved dance and fashion design extracurriculars are cut due to budget constraints. As the PTA president, Janae is ready to fight the new interim superintendent to reinstate the arts programs, only to discover that the person in that role is none other than Adam. He proposes a weekend cabin getaway so they can work together to find alternative funding—and acknowledge the obvious attraction and unresolved feelings between them. Janae and Adam are both thoughtful, emotionally mature adults who are open about their priorities and desires. This means there isn’t much conflict between them, so tension in the book comes more from the fraught relationships they each have with a parent: Janae’s mom critiques her daughter for being bold and big (qualities Janae loves about herself), and Adam’s father always pushed his son into basketball and can’t understand why he gave that up. Janae strives to be a very different type of parent, showing her son full support to pursue his artistic dreams. Janae and Adam’s budding romance is sweet and sexy, and it’s satisfying to watch them advocate for themselves and each other in this story that showcases the importance of being true to oneself and encouraging loved ones to pave their own paths.
A gratifying romance between kind, confident, deserving leads.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250773418
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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: tomorrow
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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