Fans of relationship-driven stories will adore this sweet novel.
A drama student falls for her statistics tutor while struggling to balance classes and her first paid acting job.
Persian college freshman Nasrin Mahdavi lives for musical theater and has been accepted to New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. She quickly makes friends with fellow drama student Beckett Banerjee, who is gay and Indian American, and lands a role in a web series. The only problem is that her parents think she’s in business school. Nasrin reasons that it’ll be easier to tell them the truth once she can show them how well she’s doing, and she signs up for a statistics course to help maintain the illusion. However, she struggles with it and, without realizing who is behind the statstutornyu email address she finds advertised, hires her class’s rude TA to tutor her. But as Nasrin spends more time with handsome White boy Max Fletcher, she realizes there’s more to him than meets the eye. Meanwhile, things become increasingly difficult when her parents surprise her by moving to New York from Indiana. Worse, Minu, Nasrin’s cousin from Tehran, who’s in the States to attend Barnard, starts blackmailing her over her secret. Readers will enjoy following Nasrin’s journey as she grows in maturity both as a friend and daughter and learns to be true to herself. The portrayal of drama school as both exciting and challenging is also appealing.
Fans of relationship-driven stories will adore this sweet novel. (Fiction. 13-18)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-368-07755-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance.
A Connecticut girl and her best friend devise a series of plans in order to achieve their goals: following a dream and winning back an ex.
Eighteen-year-old Audrey Barbour has a Master Plan: attend Blue Ridge Glass School in North Carolina and someday turn her Etsy shop, Golightly Glass, into a thriving business. But her uber-wealthy parents insist that she instead follow in their footsteps and go to business school. So Audrey decides to go find the tuition money she needs with help from her best friend, Henry Chen. Henry needs a favor, too: He hopes that fake dating Audrey will help him win back his ex-girlfriend, and he points out to a reluctant Audrey that this could make her crush, Griffin, notice her. While Audrey’s parents vacation in France for three weeks, the pair rent out the Barbour mansion on the Long Island Sound. Soon romantic chemistry grows alongside their business partnership. Despite the pair’s great preparation and an abundance of secondary characters with connections and talents to help pull off their increasingly ambitious ideas, plans go awry, leaving Audrey and Henry scrambling and second-guessing their choices. The pacing is even, but the characters often take a back seat to the whirlwind of activity that drives the plot, with the emphasis falling on each person’s practical skills and their role in keeping the action moving over their emotional bonds. Audrey is white, and Henry’s surname cues him as Chinese American.
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593904794
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A character-focused entry that will satisfy fans.
Romantic complications between a trained killer and one of her captors drive this sequel to Watch Me (2025).
Appealing to readers who prefer their romantic dramas to be light on action and heavy on long passages of banter, bitter sibling arguments, and tortured reflections, Mafi continues the tale of Rosabelle Wolff, the flaxen-haired assassin from the dystopic Reestablishment, and magnetic, “impossibly stunning” James Anderson, her nemesis-turned-lover who’s still trying to take down the regime. Now desperate to accomplish several secret missions, Rosa easily escapes from one of The New Republic’s prisons, where she was left in the series opener, and, dressed in “a little kid’s cat onesie,” eludes all pursuers except for James, who can seemingly find her at will. Enigmatic Rosa responds unpredictably to many human contacts—including with violence, temporary death (one of her abilities), or a sudden panic attack. Along with the central pair of rivals and lovers, James’ older brother, Aaron, shares the narration. Bestseller Mafi tucks in several subplots, including, notably, a cameo from Juliette Ferrars, the protagonist of the original Shatter Me series, who’s undergoing a scarily difficult pregnancy. Amid the slowly simmering rising action, the author delivers a revelation and a twist that set up a potential series climax. Some ethnic diversity is present in the supporting cast.
A character-focused entry that will satisfy fans. (Dystopian. 14-adult)Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063419056
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Storytide/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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