A poignant and skillfully crafted second-chance romance.
A father’s request leads a soldier back to his hometown and the woman he thought he’d lost forever in Yarros’ (The Last Letter, 2019, etc.) novel.
Growing up in the small town of Alba, Colorado, Camden “Cam” Daniels had a reputation as a troublemaker. After high school, he became a Green Beret and inspired his brother, Sullivan, to join the Army. When a split-second decision on the battlefield ends with Sullivan’s death, the dead soldier’s father, Arthur, and the town of Alba can’t forgive Cam. Six years later, however, Cam receives a voicemail message from his father. At 58, Arthur is dealing with the devastating effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and wants Cam to help him get the “do not resuscitate” order opposed by his elder son, Alexander, known as “Xander,” who’s become Alba’s mayor. Cam returns to Alba and encounters Willow Bradley, his childhood friend and Sullivan’s former girlfriend. He loves Willow but didn’t reveal it after she began dating his brother, and he’s unaware that she loves him, too. To garner support for his father’s case, Cam works with Willow to turn Alba’s historic Rose Rowan Mine into a tourist attraction, and their rekindled friendship turns passionate. But Cam wonders if their relationship can survive the pressures of his father’s court case and the town’s scrutiny. In chapters that alternate between Cam’s and Willow’s first-person perspectives, the romance develops at a slow burn as the couple struggles to make peace with Cam’s guilt over Sullivan’s death and other issues. Although their relationship is the heart of the novel, Cam’s efforts to help his father and resolve their troubled past form a well-developed subplot as he and his brother prepare to face off in court. A gifted storyteller, Yarros captures well the rhythms of life in a once thriving town, and her book succeeds as both a contemporary romance and a sensitively observed story of a son trying to reconnect with his estranged father before it is too late.
A poignant and skillfully crafted second-chance romance.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64063-816-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Quick (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) delivers another Hollywood golden age romantic suspense that’s a little over-the-top, but in a...
After surviving a murderous attack and starting a new life as an innkeeper, a former trapeze artist is drawn to the enigmatic man investigating the bizarre murder of her first-ever guest.
Amalie Vaughn is putting the past behind her, especially the recent attack from the Death Catcher, a serial killer who targeted trapeze artists. Using every dime of a family inheritance, she’s bought a villa in Burning Cove, a fashionable California resort town, determined to make it a premier inn. Unfortunately, the mansion has had a bad reputation since a Hollywood psychic jumped off its roof. Then her first guest, an inventor, is murdered at the hands of his robot during an exhibition. Amalie is worried that the event will further risk her chances of success, and when Matthias Jones, a rumored gangster, shows up to investigate the crime, she feels tarred by his interest—in her and in the possessions the inventor left behind. Matthias is sexy and intriguing, and his intuitive talent—an ability to tell when people are lying—is disconcerting, but after Amalie’s circus life and near-death experience, she figures it’s a manageable challenge. Matthias isn’t exactly a gangster, though, and when the investigation uncovers a cryptic machine that would threaten national security if it landed in the wrong hands, Matthias moves into Amalie's inn since she’s become a target. As suspects pile up and the danger gets closer, so do Amalie and Matthias. The romance is sexy, and it's entertaining to watch Amalie save her livelihood through the power of publicity with help from an aging movie star and a celebrity gossip columnist.
Quick (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) delivers another Hollywood golden age romantic suspense that’s a little over-the-top, but in a clever, fun way.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-58536-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
With her happy balance of love, sex, and the supernatural, Roberts has become the fairy godmother of escapists and the queen of formula romance. Leaving the “Jones curse” of last spring’s Homeport, Roberts dives now into Anguelique’s Curse and the life of another ambitious career girl. It seems that Anguelique Maunoir was a 16-year-old healer who in 1533 was burned for witchcraft, but not before putting her double-whammy on the gold and bejeweled amulet her lover gave her before his own death. Now, Matthew Lassiter and his family of salvage divers have known nothing but bad luck since starting their search for the necklace. Matthew’s father was murdered by Silas VanDyke, another of this author’s sadly two-dimensional villains, while his uncle Buck lost a leg to a shark. Matthew, though, still hits pay dirt when he and Buck team up with Tate Beaumont and her loving parents to dive for a 16th-century Spanish ship off the coast of Nevis and St. Kitts. Young Tate is the logical, reasonable one of this pair of lovers, studying to become a marine archaeologist and dreaming of one day having her own museum; Matthew, on the other hand, is the stormy one who’s had a tougher row to hoe and now loves Tate’s mother’s home-cooked dinners. Yet, true to the familiar type of honorable ravishers and responsible rogues, he gives Tate up rather than see her drop out of school to follow a lowlife diver like himself. Eight years later, when no one seems particularly happy, the Beaumonts and Lassiters reunite to search for Anguelique’s Curse: Tate hopes to establish her professional credentials, Matthew to avenge his father’s death. After lots of salty sea and sex, as well as a short course in treasure hunting and marine salvage, the lovers will discover (no surprise) that their fortune is in each other. Clunky denouement aside, Roberts’s legion of fans will swarm to this.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14441-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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