This romantic mystery is heavy on the romance but lacking in plot development.
Two doctors tackle a mystery and fall in love in Stolin’s romance novel.
Dr. Mark Moore makes the Sam Heard Clinic his first stop as soon as he arrives in the town of Crescent Hill. After being forced to leave his previous position due to a patient dying after undergoing his new dementia treatment, Mark is eager to take any position that will allow him to continue his research. Even though Mark’s machine shows great promise in treating dementia, and the clinic needs the money an accompanying research grant could bring in, Dr. Susan Pace isn’t eager to have Mark join the operation. As a psychiatrist, she prefers a holistic approach using talk therapy, not a supposedly miraculous machine that messes with patients’ brains (“I’ve never believed in machines to do what human contact can do”). But after being warned that the clinic will close if they don’t get the grant, Susan has to accept Mark’s presence and learn to work with him. When they test the machine on Susan’s star patient, Gertie, she regains a memory about her husband’s unexplained death in a fire several years earlier. Mark and Susan find themselves embroiled in a town mystery as they strive to save their livelihoods and navigate their growing feelings for each other—they could really use a Christmas miracle. In this romantic mystery novel, Stolin gives readers a fast-tracked love story—with so much going on in the brief narrative, much of the action feels rushed. Susan and Mark are fully fleshed-out characters, and their patients also show dimension. Unfortunately, the villain (and their motivations) leaves much to be desired, and the mystery element feels underdeveloped due to a lack of exposition and space to build. The premise has promise, and the romance is sweet, but overall, the story is a tad underwhelming.
This romantic mystery is heavy on the romance but lacking in plot development.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781509262816
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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