Fidelity to the timeline of previous books weighs down a long-awaited romance.
In Victorian London, a young woman decides she must find a husband, only to fall in love with her brother’s best friend.
Lady Alice Ancaster is the younger sister of the Duke of Ripley, who, along with his friends Ashmont and Blackwood, is one of the young, brash, and wealthy dukes known in society as “Their Dis-Graces.” When the latest drunken antics of the Dis-Graces almost get her brother killed, Alice decides she has no choice but to secure a husband for herself. If her brother dies, she will fall into the clutches of his heir, the vile Lord Worbury. When Giles Bouverie Lyon, Duke of Blackwood, learns of Alice’s plan, he follows her to London, determined to protect her interests. When he was 17, Blackwood chose the desultory life of an entitled young aristocrat over a courtship with Alice, but now that he’s nearing 30, he is ready to settle down and make Alice his wife. Chase’s sparkling, witty banter is on fine display, but the plot is almost aggressively disjointed. Alice is courted by an older gentleman considering marriage for the first time; Worbury plots Ripley’s downfall, hoping to inherit the wealthy estate; Alice asks Blackwood to help her find a young street urchin who’s in trouble; and Alice and Blackwood learn that her brother is missing and search the countryside to find him. The real purpose of these disparate scenes is to show Blackwood in a new light, both to himself and to Alice. He is a mature and competent partner on their adventures, leading Alice to reconsider her opinion of him and agree to marriage. It’s effective until Blackwood decides to risk his marriage to save his friends—a timeline that was established in previous books in the series, but one that leaves this book feeling emotionally hollow.
Fidelity to the timeline of previous books weighs down a long-awaited romance.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780063111387
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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.
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.
