While wordy, this flower-filled drama brims with both tension and longing.
Author Blue presents a romance about a small-business owner in love.
Fiona Turner is a florist in Iowa. She and her ex-husband, Quade, have been divorced for several years, but they’ve remained friends. Fiona still lives in the house that she bought with Quade, and he put up the funds for her business. Her ex is a rich bankruptcy lawyer, but he never really made Fiona’s heart flutter. Enter a wholesale flower grower in Florida named “Big” Bo Thompson. Fiona and Bo chat over the phone, and they both feel a connection. When they meet in person at a florist conference, the attraction is instantaneous. But Quade may become a problem. In the period leading up to Fiona’s trip to the conference, he’d been acting odd. As Fiona puts it, “something inside him has snapped.” Quade, who still has keys to Fiona’s home, lets himself inside in the middle of the night and walks right into Fiona’s bedroom. Later, he claims that he doesn’t even think of them as divorced but rather that they’ve gone through “a minor adjustment from our original agreement.” The early pages set up the upcoming conflict nicely. Quade seems harmless enough at first, though it becomes apparent that trouble is his to make. Bo (“Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome”) might be the ideal match for Fiona, but it appears he’ll need to weather several storms to make their relationship work. As the tension rises, the burning question remains: How far will Quade go in his attempts to control his ex-wife? While the pages fly by, extraneous, stilted prose can be distracting (“I wish I was in the mood to let on over her beautiful work, but I just want to be quick and efficient right now. I shouldn’t call Bo back, but I know I will. And that knowledge is going to make it insufferable trying to get through this day”). But that won’t stop most readers from reaching the satisfying showdown.
While wordy, this flower-filled drama brims with both tension and longing.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 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
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.
A heartbroken man lusts after his therapist while seeking revenge on a drug kingpin and his enforcer.
Mitch Haskell’s wife, Angela, died two years ago of an apparent suicide, but Mitch has always believed the scene was staged. Certainly, she would never have willingly left their young son, Andrew, behind. Consumed with a thirst for vengeance, Mitch—a former Marine and undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and currently a police detective—is struggling with alcohol dependency and uncontrolled rage. Andrew is living with his in-laws, who are making not-so-subtle suggestions that they might apply for permanent guardianship if Mitch can’t get it together. So his boss and best friend, John Bowie, mandates that he go into therapy, which puts him in the path of sexy Dr. Dylan Reede. Within a few days, Mitch makes a connection between two new murders and the death of his former partner; finds a big clue that points to the truth about Angela’s death; goes undercover as a homeless man; takes on a vicious drug cartel; and obnoxiously bullies Dylan with a charm offensive that leads them inevitably to bed. While Mitch seems to lean into the stereotype of the ex-soldier/cop with deeply buried trauma who believes that the ends justify the means—at least in law enforcement—Dylan offers the strength and sweetness to help him start breaking down his walls, allowing herself to be vulnerable in turn. Is passionate sex enough to ground a relationship and a family for the long term? For these characters, and the breakneck speed of this thriller, it’s as good a foundation as any.
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781538743027
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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