A sweet and occasionally spicy love story for fans of second-chance romance.
Former teenage sweethearts find their way back to each other in Bailey’s romance novel.
Darby Andrews is on the brink of marrying Jackson when something in her heart makes her write a letter to the one that got away. Resigning herself to her fate, she puts the letter aside, only for her sister Dahlia to send it—setting the stage for her long-lost love Leo Graham to reappear and help her escape the fate of a loveless marriage, which has been engineered by her domineering father. The narrative shifts to 10 years earlier, when 17-year-old Darby is sent to her grandmother’s home in Pacific Shores, California, for the summer while her parents deal with a situation involving her rebellious sister. Raised in a conservative and controlling household in Kansas, Darby doesn’t know what to do with her feelings for Leo, the handsome surfer boy who uses the trail through her grandma’s yard to get to the beach. Over one bewitching summer of freedom, Darby and Leo fall in love. The novel switches between timelines and the perspectives of Leo and Darby. Bailey does a great job of contrasting their teenage chemistry with their guarded present selves as they take a road trip in a cherry-red 1976 Mustang far from Darby’s wedding, trying to unravel what went wrong before and determine why Darby found herself about to walk down the aisle with somebody else. The dual timeline will have readers absorbed in the captivating love story—even if it isn’t initially clear that “now” and “then” are 10 years apart (the author uses only days and months to show the passage of time in her chapter titles). Bailey’s prose is so achingly romantic (“We are infinite. We are destined. Written in the stars”) that it quickly overrides the timeline confusion to detail a romance in which the fireworks are clear from the very beginning.
A sweet and occasionally spicy love story for fans of second-chance romance.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781964264172
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Page & Vine
Review Posted Online: April 16, 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 book that will wolfishly appeal to the most heated fans of omegaverse erotica.
Tess Covington is a talented, successful contractor who just learned that she’s a late-in-life omega wolf shifter. Her new boss, surly innkeeper Hunter Barrett, is an alpha who’s opposed to the remodeling she’s there to do.
Tess hasn’t made it public that she’s being considered for her own HGTV makeover show, but she runs her career like a well-oiled machine. She posts a lot of her remodels on social media, granting her a certain level of celebrity, and leans on her brothers to help run the business she took over after a stroke made it impossible for her father to keep working. Hunter’s last serious relationship with an omega 10 years ago left him deeply wounded, ending when his parents were killed in a car accident and he moved back home to take care of their lodge—hence his resistance to change. With few exceptions, Tess keeps her newly diagnosed omega status to herself. Unfortunately, as an alpha, Hunter sniffs her out and seems to be the only person capable of helping her with her sudden heats, so there’s a lot of very smutty caretaking. The specificity of omegaverse hierarchy might be new to some readers, but Ferguson’s worldbuilding is quick, easy, and deeply horny. General romance readers might enjoy the grumpy-meets-sunshine and stranded-in-a-snowstorm tropes, although for a book about shifters, the characters spend surprisingly little time in wolf form. There’s not much danger of character development or surprising plot elements here, but for fans excited to read about animalistic mating, that might be enough.
A book that will wolfishly appeal to the most heated fans of omegaverse erotica.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593953693
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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