An engaging and often skillfully written romance.
A young Oregonian woman navigates her parents’ divorce and her own romantic complications in a coming-of-maturity novel.
In 2017, Elle Fox is a 23-year-old would-be writer living in a suburban town near Portland, Oregon. While waiting for her career as a novelist to begin, she’s taken a job at the Portland Diamond jewelry company, where she works with “glittering, timeless things.” She’s also healing from her parents’ recent split and from the dramatic collapse, five years ago, of her intense relationship with the erratic Scott Darcy, who worked at her father’s auto repair shop. Elle hasn’t crossed paths with Scott since then—until one June morning, when they run into each other in a Starbucks parking lot. As a result, Elle is thrown into emotional turmoil once again, so she accepts her friend Kacey’s invitation to a July 4th beach house party on the Oregon coast, looking for escape. The weekend doesn’t prove to be the carefree getaway she’d hoped, though, as Scott shows up as well. To make matters worse, the handsome, wealthy Noah, on whom Elle has a crush, turns out to be friends with Elle’s estranged father—whoalsoshows up at the coast. Over the course of this book, Kraft’s brightly humorous narrative skillfully spins out Elle’s story, hopping between tantalizing sections set in 2012 and 2017. This narrative structure gives the work a dynamic sense of suspense that meshes nicely with Elle’s own inability to face the traumas of her past. However, the protagonist’s repeated unwillingness to listen to Scott as he tries to explain himself, and their verbal sparring in general, gets tiresome, and the book’s Jane Austen references feel forced and unnecessary. That said, the reader will be drawn in by the vivid characters and by writing that’s sprightly in its evocative descriptions; for example, a young woman is said to have an “athletic vampire look,” and boxes of car parts are described as “stacked against the wall like a losing game of Tetris.”
An engaging and often skillfully written romance.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-519749-62-6
Page Count: 363
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.
Two people with bad luck in relationships find each other through a popular Reddit thread.
Emma Grant and her best friend, Maddy, are travel nurses, working at hospitals for three-month stints while they see the country. Just a few weeks before they’re set to move to Hawaii, Emma reads a popular “Am I the Asshole” Reddit thread from a Minnesota man who thinks he’s cursed—women he dates find their soulmates after breaking up with him, and the latest one found true love with his best friend! Emma has had a similar experience, which inspires her to DM the man and commiserate. She’s delighted by her witty, lively interactions with software engineer Justin Dahl, and is intrigued when he suggests that if they date each other, maybe they’ll each find their soulmate afterward. Emma upends the Hawaii plan and convinces Maddy to move to Minneapolis for the summer so she can meet Justin in person. The overly complex setup brings Emma and Justin together and the two hit it off, with Justin immediately falling head over heels for Emma. Jimenez then pivots to creating romantic roadblocks and melodramatic subplots centering on each character’s family of origin. Justin’s mother is about to serve six years in prison for embezzlement, which means Justin must move back home to care for his three much younger siblings. Emma was traumatized by her own mother for much of her childhood, left to fend for herself and eventually abandoned in the foster system. When her mother shows up in Minnesota, Emma must face her traumatic childhood and admit that she has prioritized her mother’s well-being over her own. There is little time devoted to Emma’s painful efforts to heal herself enough to accept Justin’s love, which leaves the novel feeling unsatisfying.
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781538704431
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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