There’s enough fast-paced action, clever banter, and sizzling chemistry for even the most skeptical nonbeliever.
The X-Files meets Hype House in Marlowe’s silly, sexy sophomore romance.
When social media influencer El Martin goes live during an encounter with an unidentified flying object, her brand tanks and her fame-chasing roommates are eager for her to forget all about it and move on to her next sponsored post. Agent Carter Brody of the Private Intelligence Sector catches her alien content, though, and it looks eerily familiar to him; he saw something like it as a kid, just before his father, also a PIS agent, mysteriously died. After getting the all-clear from his boss—who happens to be his father’s former partner, the chain-smoking pseudo uncle who raised him following his dad’s death—Carter is cleared to follow up on El’s sighting. El is used to being stalked by fans and paparazzi, so one hapless man in black is no match for her, but Carter eventually gets through her defenses and an unlikely and slightly hostile partnership is born. What they find instead of the little green men they fear is a massive government cover-up linked to the death of Carter’s father. As the stakes grow higher, so does their intense attraction to one another. In the midst of car chases and B-list celebrity events, El finds that with Carter, she’s able to take off her public-facing mask. And after a lifetime of looking for a place to belong, Carter finds that El is as committed to making him finally feel safe as she is to helping him find the truth. While the book fails to deliver on the flying saucers promised by the cover, the action does not disappoint. A wildly entertaining cast of secondary characters, steamy sex scenes, and pop-culture references add to the fun.
There’s enough fast-paced action, clever banter, and sizzling chemistry for even the most skeptical nonbeliever.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9780593640104
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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 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
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