Prettily written but too unfocused to entirely captivate.
Star-crossed lovers must contend with a family feud and threatening fires.
When aspiring artist Violet Arden gets caught up in a scandal, she retreats to Pressmore, her cousin’s English country estate, which neighbors the ruins of Clafton, once home to the Kerrs, longtime nemeses of her family. The Kerr patriarch perished in the fire that decimated the house, leaving behind his wife and two sons. Alasdair Kerr has now returned home after years of traveling and acquiring art, ready to rebuild, take up residence at Clafton, and hopefully rend his mother from her complete devotion to a shifty clergyman. Violet and Alasdair were briefly friends as children, but now Violet would happily steer clear of hulking, handsome Alasdair. When romance brews between his rakish brother and her cousin’s new sister-in-law, they must join forces to stop the lovers from making rash decisions. They’re further thrust together when mysterious fires endanger Violet. They grow in each other’s esteem during this time spent together and soon find themselves falling in love. Following Much Ado About Margaret (2024), this Regency romance features another Arden sister and has similar Shakespearean influences and lovely prose. There are too many moving pieces that don’t fully gel, though—the secondary romance starts strong but peters out, the mystery of the fires doesn’t add much tension when it’s obvious who’s behind it, and the leads’ former romantic dalliances take up too many pages for how little they add to the story. Violet and Alasdair are both winsome, but the unnecessary padding distracts from their cute love story. Still, a theme woven throughout about the purpose, power, and simple delight of art and fighting back against those who would try to silence it is timely.
Prettily written but too unfocused to entirely captivate.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593499412
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fun, positively frothy friends-to-lovers romance.
While on her sister’s wedding cruise, a woman enlists her childhood best friend for help as she attempts to woo her longtime crush.
JoJo Burton is bad at love. After she leaves her terrible fiancé, Pearce Richmond, at the altar, she’s convinced she might never settle down. But during her sister’s wedding, which is being held on an eight-day cruise to the Bahamas and Cozumel, she and her family concoct a plan that will help her seduce her recently divorced childhood crush, Finn Turner. The two of them once shared a blindfolded kiss that might have ruined JoJo for all other men, and she’s never forgotten it. But then JoJo’s best friend, Cooper Watts, shows up. Cooper and JoJo were inseparable as children but didn’t talk for years after she got engaged to Pearce. She doesn’t know why he suddenly disappeared on her, but it doesn’t matter—he’s here now, and she needs him to help her get Finn to reenact that long-ago kiss. But after she and Cooper share a cabin, get thrown together for every wedding week activity, and even engage in the classic friendly flirting meant to make another man jealous, JoJo starts to realize that Finn might not be the man she’s been waiting for, after all. Center keeps things light, focusing on humor even when the subject matter veers into family drama. JoJo and Cooper find themselves caught up in the sort of tropes that are catnip for romance fans—he takes care of her when she has a sunburn, for instance, and they participate in a slow-dance contest. As Center reveals in an author’s note at the beginning, “Spoiler: This book will end well.” The destination may not be a surprise, but the journey is a delight.
A fun, positively frothy friends-to-lovers romance.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9781250408051
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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