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
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.
A Seattle woman meets a Chicago businessman as she flies home from a visit to a friend, and her small act of kindness blossoms into more.
Maisy Gallagher is barely making ends meet. With her father’s unexpected death a few years earlier, she dropped out of nursing school to help out in the family’s jewelry store, working with her uncle. Her older brother, Sean, also moved back home so he and Maisy could help their mother and their 10-year-old brother, Patrick. When Maisy offers a ride to a rude businessman who sat next to her on the plane, she’s just operating on the kindness her grandmother instilled in her. That businessman, Chase Furst, turns out to be an incredibly wealthy banker; he’s flown into Seattle to make funeral arrangements for his mother, to whom he hasn’t spoken in years. Sparks fly in this gentle and predictable romance that leans heavily on long-distance and class-divide tropes. As with many of the author’s books, Christianity and the characters’ reliance on God’s will—as they wait and see what happens next—play a large part, as do traditional gender roles where women cook, clean, and only work in paying jobs until they have children at home to take care of. The author does offer a lighter touch when it comes to the painful ways alcoholism can destroy family relationships, with an understanding of the regret that can weigh on every family member.
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091676
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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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