A quick-witted depiction of moviemaking best suited for contemplative romantics.
A group of famous film actors moves to Sweden to shoot an unconventional movie in Leavy’s novel.
The avant-garde French filmmaker Jean Mercier is making a new English-language film featuring many fan-favorite celebrities. Considered a thoughtful and cerebral director, Mercier’s choice of actors, including a former teenage heartthrob and an action-adventure star, is unexpected. As per Mercier’s instructions, the actors will be required to live together, on location in Sweden, for the duration of the shoot. Of particular note is 42-year-old movie star Finn Forrester, who tries to break up with his longtime girlfriend, Savannah, just before he departs. Savannah will have none of it, however, telling Finn to wait until his return to make any decisions. Two weeks into the shoot, the American philosopher and artist Ella Sinclair arrives on set, and Finn is immediately smitten (“She’s a real artist through and through, the embodiment of inspiration. And not bad to look at either”). Ella seems to be Mercier’s muse, and Finn is at first unsure whether it’s acceptable to pursue her. As the pair grow closer, Finn wonders how he could ever have a meaningful life without Ella in it. Meanwhile, Ella worries Finn is being disingenuous about his intention to end his preexisting relationship. As readers are treated to a delightful will-they, won’t-they romp, the group of actors grows progressively closer, and many of their lives are changed irrevocably. There are many scenes in which the cast, a cerebral group, engages in compelling and high-level philosophical debates about art, sex, films, and more. Each character is more charming than the next, and the stay at the Swedish home seems like great fun, but there are moments when excessive detail stalls the otherwise lively narrative; much of the story unfolds over meals, in which characters place one food order after another, again and again. Other details about the setting (that might help ground the reader in the action) are sparse. Even so, the intellectual discussions throughout the book prove fresh and engaging and will keep the pages turning.
A quick-witted depiction of moviemaking best suited for contemplative romantics.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781647425678
Page Count: 224
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.
A second-chance romance from the author of Slow Dance (2024) and the Simon Snow Trilogy.
Cherry is fat. There are other things to know about Cherry, but this fact is essential to how she sees herself and—she knows—essential to how other people see her. And now that her husband’s hugely popular webcomic is a movie, she not only has to endure people confusing her with the character that’s based on her, but also the knowledge that the actor playing this character is wearing a fat suit. This pain is exacerbated by the fact that her marriage is over. It’s at this rock-bottom moment that her college crush reenters her life…This is a book about being fat, and Rowell does a great job of depicting what internalized fatphobia looks like. “Cherry was so used to thinking about being fat, she hardly even noticed that she was doing it. She was so used to thinking about being fat, she never thought about it.” Observations like this will resonate with a lot of readers, as will Cherry’s complicated feelings about weight-loss drugs. This is also a romance and, as a romance, it’s kind of all over the place. It’s totally realistic for Cherry to wonder if Russ—the guy from college—never pursued her because of her weight. This is a conflict that feels true. What’s less believable is the way he reacts when he sees a trailer for Cherry’s husband’s movie. It’s clear that he didn’t get that this movie was going to be a blockbuster. In short, Russ freaks out, and it’s not at all clear why. As for Cherry’s husband, the way she feels about him at the beginning of the book is totally disconnected from the way she feels about him in the novel’s latter half. It’s normal to have complicated feelings about the end of a marriage, of course, but there’s no emotional throughline to help the reader understand why Cherry’s feelings change so dramatically.
Rowell delivers the requisite happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780063380264
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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