Compelling, warmly satisfying romantic fiction from a writer—and a series—you’ll want to revisit.
A decade after they shared an unexplored attraction, bartender Kyra Dixon and billionaire Will Chase meet again in Manhattan, leading to a relationship hampered by a clash of cultures.
Kyra had a crush on Will in college, when they’d been friends-only with potential for more. Then she’d had to leave school due to her father’s declining health and was crippled financially when her mother racked up debts in her name. She’s slowly paying everything off thanks to a bartending job at an exclusive Manhattan club and a position at a program for at-risk kids that offers an apartment as compensation. Running into Will at her favorite quick-serve cafe and discovering that he owns the billion-dollar company stuns her. “He’d always been out of her league, but she didn’t expect him to be that successful.” Turns out Will had snubbed his parents’ plans for him to join the blue-blood family law firm and started a restaurant chain, to phenomenal success. Kyra and Will enter into a relationship that begins at his family’s enormous annual spring get-together, where she faces polite contempt from his mother, and they finally act on their mutual attraction. However, while the relationship moves quickly and Kyra and Will are soon spending nearly all their free time together, it also brings up deep-seated insecurities for both of them, especially when their social and professional obligations spill over. Herkness’ plot may sound very billionaire-meets-Cinderella familiar, but her layered storytelling, elegant writing, and deep sensitivity to a varied cast of characters raises this lovely book beyond genre and trope, aided by the star role the after-school program takes in everyone’s resolutions.
Compelling, warmly satisfying romantic fiction from a writer—and a series—you’ll want to revisit.Pub Date: July 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5039-0214-5
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
For Coulter's sizable following (The Heiress Bride, etc. etc.): a blast-off for a new Regency trilogy involving romance and a trace of mystery. Josephina, dubbed "Duchess" at an early age because of her cool aloofness—the result of learning, at the age of nine, that she's a bastard—is the by-blow of the Earl of Chase and a lovely mother ensconced in a nearby cottage. Duchess is raised in Chase Park and, after the deaths of her mother and the Earl, spirits herself off with a huge servant named Badger to the cottage, where she supports herself in a mysterious fashion. Meanwhile, the new Earl, Marcus Wyndham, learns—to his horror—that Duchess's father, who married her mother at last, has left all to his daughter, who now has the problem of restoring the inheritance and pride to handsome Marcus. The answer, of course, is to trick him into marriage—and bed. While this venerable and favorite feature of the romantic novel—spouse-seduction—is oozing on, a group of cousins troop in from the Colonies, including vigorous widower Trevor, who, like others in the family, is intrigued by rumors of a buried treasure on the premises. Before that's discovered, though, there'll be some near-fatal attempts on the Duchess's life and an escape from a murderer—who's bound to resurface in future volumes. Coulter seems to have hit a popular vein between the more elegant Regency romances (with period diction) of, say, Patricia Veryan, and the squashiest of the paperback palpitators. A quick circulator.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13878-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
A pleasant read with no major surprises, the novel profits from the author’s skill at illuminating the most profound (and...
An unexpected patrimony leads a young woman to love and family in this first installment of a new series by the beloved Regency romance author.
An orphanage in Bath has been Anna Snow's home since she was left there as a toddler by a shadowy figure. She is largely content with living and working there as a schoolteacher now, partly supported by an unknown benefactor’s stipend. Like her fellow orphans, though, she has always weaved stories of her origins, and the best one—wealth and status—suddenly comes true when she finds out that she is the daughter of the recently deceased Earl of Riverdale, born during a secret early marriage. Yet Anna, who learns that her name is Anastasia Westcott, longs most for familial affection, which seems impossible to gain from her newly discovered half siblings, who have been suddenly disinherited. Balogh (Unforgiven, 2016, etc.) specializes in romance novels that both accept the essential solitude of the human condition and offer love as a stalwart companion; here, Anna has Avery Archer, the Duke of Netherby, to help her in this balancing act. Netherby is an unusual romance hero in that he is a man of beauty with a physical stature that evokes Asian martial artists rather than the anachronistically muscled men often found in the subgenre. Anna is initially wary of his aura of refined nonchalance but finds him to be a true friend as she struggles to learn her aristocratic duties and searches for allies in her new role. Netherby is taken aback by his own attraction to the woman he had pegged as a rube but whose simplicity and dignity slowly amplify her loveliness in his eyes.
A pleasant read with no major surprises, the novel profits from the author’s skill at illuminating the most profound (and burdensome) of human desires—to love and be loved.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-47779-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Signet
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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