A beautifully told rom-com that’s full of laughs, heart, and scorching sexual tension.
A fun-loving lawyer promises to play matchmaker for a surly (but smoking-hot) businessman.
It’s wedding season, and Zara Patel is getting used to her seat at the singles table. Although her aunties are always trying to set her up with eligible bachelors, she’d rather focus on her own successful matchmaking efforts. Helping other people find their happily-ever-afters is a lot easier than attempting a relationship herself, especially since Zara thinks she’s “too much” for most men. Fellow singles table resident Jay Dayal, an Air Force veteran and current security company owner, immediately knows that Zara isn’t the woman for him (not that he’s even looking for a woman). She’s loud, impulsive, and so klutzy she often ends up in the ER. However, neither of them can deny the sparks that fly between them when they meet during a bachelor/bachelorette party paintball game and Zara shoots him in the butt. When Jay’s mother begs him to find a partner, Zara agrees to use her matchmaking skills to set him up with someone if he promises to use his business to help her struggling law firm find clients. As they spend more time together, though, their chemistry becomes impossible to ignore, and their deal turns into a no-strings-attached relationship. But between Zara’s reluctance to fall in love and Jay’s inability to open up, things are more complicated than they expected. Can they let their walls down and see that the perfect match might be right in front of them? Desai creates a romantic comedy that has both genuine laugh-out-loud moments (usually because of Zara’s antics) and quieter, more emotional scenes (including Jay’s struggle to tell Zara about his combat-related PTSD and Zara’s deep wounds from her parents’ acrimonious divorce). Zara and Jay both feel like real people with believable flaws, and their relationship plays out in a way that feels earned, with plenty of steamy moments along the journey.
A beautifully told rom-com that’s full of laughs, heart, and scorching sexual tension.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-10060-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.
Two struggling authors spend the summer writing and falling in love in a quaint beach town.
January Andrews has just arrived in the small town of North Bear Shores with some serious baggage. Her father has been dead for a year, but she still hasn’t come to terms with what she found out at his funeral—he had been cheating on her mother for years. January plans to spend the summer cleaning out and selling the house her father and “That Woman” lived in together. But she’s also a down-on-her-luck author facing writer’s block, and she no longer believes in the happily-ever-after she’s made the benchmark of her work. Her steadily dwindling bank account, though, is a daily reminder that she must sell her next book, and fast. Serendipitously, she discovers that her new next-door neighbor is Augustus Everett, the darling of the literary fiction set and her former college rival/crush. Gus also happens to be struggling with his next book (and some serious trauma that unfolds throughout the novel). Though the two get off to a rocky start, they soon make a bet: Gus will try to write a romance novel, and January will attempt “bleak literary fiction.” They spend the summer teaching each other the art of their own genres—January takes Gus on a romantic outing to the local carnival; Gus takes January to the burned-down remains of a former cult—and they both process their own grief, loss, and trauma through this experiment. There are more than enough steamy scenes to sustain the slow-burn romance, and smart commentary on the placement and purpose of “women’s fiction” joins with crucial conversations about mental health to add multiple intriguing layers to the plot.
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0673-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Jove/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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