A poignant portrait of a woman’s divorce coupled with an unconvincing new romance.
A pop superstar on the verge of a divorce falls for a major league pitcher.
Ella Simone dropped out of college in order to pursue her dreams of becoming a working musician. She married the music producer who helped land her first record contract when she was only 20. Now it’s a decade later and she’s just filed for divorce, only to learn that the predatory terms of her prenup would leave her with almost nothing, including the rights to her own music. Her lawyer thinks they can win the legal battle but warns Ella to stay out of the social media spotlight. Soon after, Ella has a wardrobe malfunction at the Grammys while presenting an award with Dodgers pitcher Miles Westbrook. The media frenzy dissecting the event—and the palpable chemistry between Ella and Miles—seems likely to tip the court of public opinion toward her ex-husband. Ella’s team concocts a PR plan to smooth things over: Miles will star in Ella’s next music video, and she will support his foundation with a performance. The novel focuses on Ella’s struggles to find herself after her husband’s painful betrayal. She’s attracted to Miles, but he’s only in a handful of scenes in the first half of the book, most of them in the presence of other people. In lieu of making Miles a point-of-view character, Ariel incorporates flashbacks to the early days of Ella’s marriage, emails from her mother, and transcriptions of voice notes between the lovers. As a result, Ella’s past and present are completely rendered, but Miles is woefully underdeveloped. The exchange of voice notes is distancing and ineffective, showing characters who talk at rather than to each other. Even when a dramatic turn of events should put Miles and his feelings in the spotlight, he barely gets a chance to speak on his own behalf.
A poignant portrait of a woman’s divorce coupled with an unconvincing new romance.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780593640616
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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: tomorrow
A smart, steamy romance.
Tomforde’s sports romance pairs boardroom power plays with dugout drama.
As the youngest and only female owner of a Major League Baseball team, Reese Remington is used to pressure. Even though Reese is the granddaughter of the Windy City Warriors’ former owner, the men around her still question her position; she’ll “most likely have to work twice as hard and make [the] club’s success twice as noticeable to have any hope of being viewed as the right person to operate this team.” It doesn’t help that the franchise is bleeding money, the result of her grandfather’s hands-off approach in the years before his retirement. Reese must use her razor-sharp intelligence and fierce business sense to not only prove herself in a role in which the public is eager to see her fail, but also to make unpopular financial decisions to get the team out of the red. Enter Emmett Montgomery, a former All-Star turned field manager whose priorities lie firmly with people rather than profit. A man devoted to his team and his adopted child, Emmett has long since closed the door on romance, despite gentle nudging from his loved ones. His empathetic team-first mentality puts him immediately at odds with Reese’s pragmatic agenda, and with his contract up at the end of the year, Emmett worries he’ll be on the chopping block if he speaks out too much. Told from the perspectives of the leads, the novel gives equal page time to Reese and Emmett. Their concerns––the scrutiny Reese must endure as a woman in a male-dominated industry, and Emmett’s worries over his contract renewal––are tangible and add a sense of urgency to their every decision. While the novel includes some unavoidable exposition dumps to orient readers, it more than compensates by establishing clear stakes and a sense of momentum from the outset. The narrative successfully introduces credible barriers to the romance, which largely follows recognizable genre beats. The baseball setting is also used effectively, with the season-long arc mirroring the couple’s romantic and professional journeys.
A smart, steamy romance.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781649379795
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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