A charming second-chance summer love story.
Carlisle offers a sweet, slow-burn romance between a singer and a homebuilder, set in a Florida beach town.
Country-singer-turned-popstar Callie Jackson is on the brink of career failure. Her last album flopped, her record label went under, she has songwriter’s block, and she just broke up with her producer boyfriend, Andrew Walker.She returns to her (fictional) hometown of Big Dune Island, Florida, to clear out her deteriorating childhood home, which has been sold, but her painful past threatens to overwhelm her. She hasn’t been able to enter the house in the nine years since her parents’ sudden, traumatic death in a car accident and is understandably surprised to find her childhood sweetheart, Jesse Thomas, doing repairs on the building. She left Jesse behind after she signed with a record labe lat 16, and he never got over it. He took over his father’s failing construction business soon after Callie left. His investors insist on building new developments, but his heart is in renewing the island’s heritage houses; he purchased Callie’s house hoping to convince them to take a gamble on renovation—and now, seeing Callie again is causing a lot of feelings to resurface. Carlisle’s winsome summer romance offers vivid characters and a beautifully described beach setting (“Sea oats danced in sync across the dunes as if an invisible conductor were directing a silent symphony”) in a story told from Jesse’s and Callie’s alternating third-person perspectives. The lingering feelings between the protagonists is palpable, and the personal and professional demands that conflict with their desires enrich the narrative. Themes of identity, grief, and loss add further depth. For Callie, returning home reminds her of her roots as a country singer and the joy in her work that’s been missing; for Jesse, what started as a restoration becomes a passion project as he sees the Callie he once knew re-emerge. The story of the pair’s sweet teenage relationship, interwoven throughout, makes for engaging reading, despite a few awkward transitions between the present and past.
A charming second-chance summer love story.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.
A heartbroken man lusts after his therapist while seeking revenge on a drug kingpin and his enforcer.
Mitch Haskell’s wife, Angela, died two years ago of an apparent suicide, but Mitch has always believed the scene was staged. Certainly, she would never have willingly left their young son, Andrew, behind. Consumed with a thirst for vengeance, Mitch—a former Marine and undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and currently a police detective—is struggling with alcohol dependency and uncontrolled rage. Andrew is living with his in-laws, who are making not-so-subtle suggestions that they might apply for permanent guardianship if Mitch can’t get it together. So his boss and best friend, John Bowie, mandates that he go into therapy, which puts him in the path of sexy Dr. Dylan Reede. Within a few days, Mitch makes a connection between two new murders and the death of his former partner; finds a big clue that points to the truth about Angela’s death; goes undercover as a homeless man; takes on a vicious drug cartel; and obnoxiously bullies Dylan with a charm offensive that leads them inevitably to bed. While Mitch seems to lean into the stereotype of the ex-soldier/cop with deeply buried trauma who believes that the ends justify the means—at least in law enforcement—Dylan offers the strength and sweetness to help him start breaking down his walls, allowing herself to be vulnerable in turn. Is passionate sex enough to ground a relationship and a family for the long term? For these characters, and the breakneck speed of this thriller, it’s as good a foundation as any.
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781538743027
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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