An entertaining period love story, nicely balancing breathless lust with social satire and high-mindedness.
Two handsome aristocrats vie for a woman’s hand in Harrington’s Regency romance.
In London, circa 1809, Alaina Sinclair, daughter of the Earl of Norwich, is making her debut at the city’s classiest balls (her prospects are helped by her gorgeousness but hindered by her scandalous habit of reading books). Heading her dance card is Graham Wallace, the Duke of Ashford, who is tall, dark, great looking, rich, kind, polite, and actively hunting a wife. Complicating matters is Graham’s best friend and ballroom wingman Christopher Kendall, the Marquess of Rochester, who is tall, blond, blue-eyed, great-looking, rich, gruff, and disdainful of marriage. (He and Alaina meet cute when he stumbles into her at the refreshments table; she calls him a drunk, and he calls her ill-mannered.) Naturally, Alaina falls for the brooding rogue Christopher while being officially courted by Graham, leading to tense scenes in which she’s supposed to be flirting with the duke but can’t help gazing into the marquess’ eyes, their hearts aflutter. Christopher proves his worth (saving Alaina when her horse bolts and defending her when she’s accused of being a bookworm), and their passion escalates to secret kissing. Alas, miscommunications—he worries that she is a gold digger after Graham’s money, she thinks he’ll never commit—keep intervening to prevent them from confessing their love. Further stirring the pot are Graham’s cousin Percy (a vile cad who hopes to steal the dukedom, threatens to spread scurrilous rumors questioning Alaina’s virtue, and briefly kidnaps her) and the sinister Lady Barbara, who masterminds Percy’s crimes in the hope that he will become rich enough to marry.
Harrington’s period yarn features an intricate, nuanced, and affecting love triangle that requires Alaina and Christopher to navigate their own mutual suspicions along with their reluctance to betray Graham. The novel’s haphazard plot has third-act problems—after the triangle resolves itself in a graceful bow-out followed by a lavish wedding-night sex scene, there are several chapters still to go with more far-fetched scheming by the villains—but the writing is strong. Adventure scenes are handled with vigorous aplomb: “He came around with his other hand with vicious intent, driving the butt of his pistol down on [Alaina’s] head, the lantern hanging from his arm the only point of light before darkness closed in on her.” The characters are colorful and sharply etched, and despite some anachronisms (Christopher talks about “collateral damage”), the prose has a droll, Austen-esque verve to it, using pompously polite palaver to reveal the crassness of high society. (“Oh no, here he comes, the lascivious Lord Finch and his merry band of drunken fools,” sighs Alaina at a ball wherein his lordship makes a hilariously insulting proposal: “I fear I have fallen madly in love with the idea of having you as my wife, and I feel you should be happy with such an arrangement.”) In keeping with the style is the spirit of the book’s message—that true love triumphs over mercenary calculation. Readers will root for the feisty Alaina to overcome the stuffed shirts and find her heart’s desire.
An entertaining period love story, nicely balancing breathless lust with social satire and high-mindedness.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798998605550
Page Count: 253
Publisher: Lady River Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2025
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
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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