This lovely debut about mature characters manages to be both comforting and sexy.
A divorced mom gets a second chance at love when she accidentally takes up a new hobby—birding.
After leaving an unsatisfying marriage that made her feel small, Celeste Johanssen is putting herself first. Her daughter will be leaving for college soon, and Celeste is ready to finally find out what it means to live for herself, not a man. When a new friend asks her to be his friend John’s temporary fake girlfriend, Celeste is happy to take on the challenge. However, when Celeste shows up to meet John, it turns out he has no idea what she’s talking about—he needs a partner for a six-week birding competition, not a fake life partner. But Celeste is full of motivational sayings and she’s ready to say yes to life, so she decides to be John’s partner in the competition—despite the fact that she knows nothing about birds. John doesn’t mind making his ex-girlfriend, a fellow birder, jealous, and Celeste knows that a new “boyfriend” will deter all the busybodies who keep asking when she’s going to start dating again. As John and Celeste spend more time together, both on birdwatching expeditions and at Celeste’s work events, they can’t deny that they have more in common than a shared interested in identifying bird calls; they also share a powerful chemistry, and soon they’re involved in a temporary relationship that’s just “birding with benefits”—perfect for both of them, since John is still bruised from his painful breakup and Celeste isn’t ready for a commitment. But as their feelings grow stronger, they’ll have to decide if a real relationship is worth the risk. Debut novelist Dubb brings in just the right amount of birding detail—enough to make the competition realistic, but never so much that attention is taken away from Celeste and John’s budding romance. It’s refreshing to read about adult characters with established lives, and Celeste and John’s relationship feels realistic as their largest obstacle is their fear of being vulnerable, not any sort of plot contrivance or miscommunication.
This lovely debut about mature characters manages to be both comforting and sexy.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781668037836
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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
A smart, steamy romance.
Tomforde’s sports romance pairs boardroom power plays with dugout drama.
As the youngest and only female owner of a Major League Baseball team, Reese Remington is used to pressure. Even though Reese is the granddaughter of the Windy City Warriors’ former owner, the men around her still question her position; she’ll “most likely have to work twice as hard and make [the] club’s success twice as noticeable to have any hope of being viewed as the right person to operate this team.” It doesn’t help that the franchise is bleeding money, the result of her grandfather’s hands-off approach in the years before his retirement. Reese must use her razor-sharp intelligence and fierce business sense to not only prove herself in a role in which the public is eager to see her fail, but also to make unpopular financial decisions to get the team out of the red. Enter Emmett Montgomery, a former All-Star turned field manager whose priorities lie firmly with people rather than profit. A man devoted to his team and his adopted child, Emmett has long since closed the door on romance, despite gentle nudging from his loved ones. His empathetic team-first mentality puts him immediately at odds with Reese’s pragmatic agenda, and with his contract up at the end of the year, Emmett worries he’ll be on the chopping block if he speaks out too much. Told from the perspectives of the leads, the novel gives equal page time to Reese and Emmett. Their concerns––the scrutiny Reese must endure as a woman in a male-dominated industry, and Emmett’s worries over his contract renewal––are tangible and add a sense of urgency to their every decision. While the novel includes some unavoidable exposition dumps to orient readers, it more than compensates by establishing clear stakes and a sense of momentum from the outset. The narrative successfully introduces credible barriers to the romance, which largely follows recognizable genre beats. The baseball setting is also used effectively, with the season-long arc mirroring the couple’s romantic and professional journeys.
A smart, steamy romance.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781649379795
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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