SECOND TIME AROUND

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.