A typical holiday sleigh ride but with quick wit and good sex.
Vale takes her celebration of small-town life from YA romance to adults-only.
Elisha Rowe left a good job in Atlanta to return to the quaint Poconos village of Piney Peaks to become the film and media liaison for the chamber of commerce. She and her family live across the street from the late Maeve Hollins’ Christmas House, made famous for its role in the 1970s romance Sleighbells Under Starlight. On the 50th anniversary of the movie that put Piney Peaks on the map, Elisha has brokered a sequel that will boost the economy of her beloved village and revitalize other small towns in the Pennsylvania region. But the deal hinges on using the house, and with Maeve’s recent death, it's been bequeathed to her great-nephew, handsome city boy Ves Hollins, a writer of YA fantasy novels, who wants to strip the house, sell it, and get out of town. Elisha is the small-town girl with the world’s biggest heart; Ves is the big-city boy who doesn't believe love will ever come his way. After the meet-cute—she thinks he’s a burglar and runs over to defend her much-loved neighbor’s house in bunny slippers, brandishing a candy cane—they take the usual romance steps from verbal fencing to flirtation, lust, mutual admiration, and love. Elisha's family and friends embrace Ves, who has never really known a loving family. With hugs and laughter, great food and all-around kindness, he’s persuaded to stay long enough to allow the production company to use his home. But then he’s leaving. Elisha has a history of men who wouldn’t stick around in her small town. Piney Peaks is a snow globe of Christmas motifs: When Ves is aroused, his “lord[’s] a-leaping.” Vale’s small-town snow globe has a cosmic heart that embraces people of all ethnicities, genders, and faiths. Everyone is entitled to joy. And good food.
A typical holiday sleigh ride but with quick wit and good sex.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780593422045
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
