Classic Lucy Score: Cute and charming with a side of chaos.
Opposites attract when a scatterbrained literary agent and a responsible lawyer fall for one another in this follow-up to Story of My Life (2025).
Literary agent Zoey Moody never would have thought she’d leave the Manhattan publishing scene for farm animals and nosy neighbors, but somehow she’s called Story Lake, Pennsylvania, home for the last six months. Zoey and her best friend/only client, Hazel Hart, ventured to the lakeside town in hopes of curing Hazel’s writer’s block. Now Hazel has written a bestselling romance inspired by her engagement to surly contractor Campbell Bishop and Zoey’s—well, still a hot mess. First, her New York apartment is turning into a condo, forcing her to stay in this godforsaken town, and she needs Hazel to write another moneymaker before she’s forced to sell all her designer bras. Thankfully, Cam’s brother Gage offers to rent Zoey the one-bedroom apartment above his law office. As town solicitor, Gage has every personality trait Zoey lacks: He’s organized, painstakingly responsible, and he plans to settle down. Zoey can’t help but admit that under all that practicality, Gage is downright sexy—though she knows they’d never make sense together. But when Gage, hoping for a distraction, confides in Zoey about a difficult family situation, the night they spend together changes everything. Can they create a future from a one-night stand, or will it always be just a wonderful mistake? The second installment of Score’s Story Lake series is as wacky and amusing as the first, with recurring favorites like Goose the bald eagle and the Bishops’ sassy sister, Laura. Zoey and Gage prove that opposites do attract, and Score leaves none of the steamy evidence to the imagination. In the epilogue, Zoey hints at another Hazel Hart book to come, and fans of the series can look forward to learning who steals the heart of the third Bishop brother.
Classic Lucy Score: Cute and charming with a side of chaos.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781728297064
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Bloom Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 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
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.
A heartbroken man lusts after his therapist while seeking revenge on a drug kingpin and his enforcer.
Mitch Haskell’s wife, Angela, died two years ago of an apparent suicide, but Mitch has always believed the scene was staged. Certainly, she would never have willingly left their young son, Andrew, behind. Consumed with a thirst for vengeance, Mitch—a former Marine and undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and currently a police detective—is struggling with alcohol dependency and uncontrolled rage. Andrew is living with his in-laws, who are making not-so-subtle suggestions that they might apply for permanent guardianship if Mitch can’t get it together. So his boss and best friend, John Bowie, mandates that he go into therapy, which puts him in the path of sexy Dr. Dylan Reede. Within a few days, Mitch makes a connection between two new murders and the death of his former partner; finds a big clue that points to the truth about Angela’s death; goes undercover as a homeless man; takes on a vicious drug cartel; and obnoxiously bullies Dylan with a charm offensive that leads them inevitably to bed. While Mitch seems to lean into the stereotype of the ex-soldier/cop with deeply buried trauma who believes that the ends justify the means—at least in law enforcement—Dylan offers the strength and sweetness to help him start breaking down his walls, allowing herself to be vulnerable in turn. Is passionate sex enough to ground a relationship and a family for the long term? For these characters, and the breakneck speed of this thriller, it’s as good a foundation as any.
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781538743027
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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