A twisty time-bending saga with an appealing lead and secondary characters.
The fates of a “virgin-geek” relationship advice columnist and the sexy ghost in her new apartment become intertwined in Ready’s contemporary paranormal romance novel.
Jillian Nejat, 27, moves into the NYC studio apartment that she has rented sight unseen. The place has mirrors everywhere, leading her to muse, “If I’d known my new apartment was a sex maniac’s love den, I would never have invited my parents along.” Jillian has “a terminal inability to speak to men,” which starts to change when a handsome ghost named Daniel, with whom she becomes comfortable talking to, appears in the apartment. Jillian visits a psychic, who senses Daniel’s energy (only Jillian can see him) and suggests that unfinished business is preventing his spirit from moving on. Daniel proceeds to assist Jillian, who rather ironically writes an advice column on love, dating, sex, and marriage for The Daily Exposé, in fielding romance queries and improving her columns. Then he disappears just as a decent dating prospect arises. Jillian is heartbroken, since she and Daniel were mutually attracted and had even progressed to paranormal-type sex. Weeks later, Jillian is overjoyed to see Daniel, alive and corporeal, at the Met. She rushes into his arms, but he doesn’t know her. She becomes convinced that time bending is at play and that she must save Daniel from dying to prevent him from becoming a ghost in the future. Daniel, who runs a Geneva-based watch company with his sister, is wary at first but eventually won over by Jillian’s persistence and charm. By novel’s end, the couple experience life-threatening dangers as well as—finally, and joyfully—true physical communion. A “second epilogue” offers further details about how Daniel got connected to Jillian.
Ready brings her trademark blend of lively tone, amusing details, heart-tugging romance, and adept plotting to this paranormal tale. Jillian transcends the clichéd, Cinderella-type innocent by also being funny (“If they’re living, if they’re breathing, it’s game over”) and an insightful SF fan (her Starfleet necklace turns out to be a significant accessory). Her fellow-geek best friend Serena, a particle physicist based (conveniently) in Geneva, serves as an explainer (of sorts) for the novel’s time-jumping construction. There’s an artful and enjoyable presentation of Jillian’s array of colleagues at The Daily Exposé, including a satisfying romance subplot and touching support for Jillian from the motley and usually warring crew by novel’s end. Daniel also hides depths beneath his obvious gifts of attractiveness and wealth. The narrative’s time-leaping logic is a bit challenging to follow, with a second epilogue further confusing and complicating matters. Still, Ready’s skill in maintaining the reader’s engagement with her plot and characters ultimately supersedes such concerns. “Daniel died, reached the Planck energy and then traveled through time and space to reach you,” Serena notes at one point in the narrative. “Why? How? We don’t know. But if logic only takes you so far, then what your heart is telling you must take you the rest of the way.”
A twisty time-bending saga with an appealing lead and secondary characters.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781954007611
Page Count: 490
Publisher: W.W. Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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