A deeply felt romance with weighty stakes.
The son of an earl falls for a destitute shop girl when he’s supposed to be courting heiresses.
Garret Kildare’s family is broke. When his parents propose either marrying off Garret’s 15-year-old sister, Mariah, or selling their ancestral lands in Ireland, Garret and his brothers—Liam, the eldest and heir; Killian, the artist; and Daire, the financial guru—decide one of them must wed an heiress in London instead, and they make a competition out of it. Tamsin Archer works at a coffeehouse that doesn’t come close to providing enough to make ends meet. She’s desperately trying to support her family and get back her younger siblings, who were sold as chimney sweep apprentices, so she resorts to stealing small trinkets from the rich and pawning them off. Garret catches her in the act of thievery, and when he learns her story, he wants to help find and rescue her brother and sister. Tamsin is hesitant to trust him at first despite his attractive kindness, but as they work together, she begins to open her heart to him. Garret knows they can’t have a future together, but she becomes all he can think about. This captivating Regency series kickoff thoughtfully wrestles with class disparities between the leads and doesn’t sugarcoat the hardships of poverty and war—Garret has trauma from his time in the navy. Yet even with these dire subjects, the story is infused with warmth and heart. Tamsin is a headstrong heroine who could use support but ultimately is capable of saving herself and forging her own path toward a better life for her loved ones. Although society views them very differently, she and Garret come to treat each other as equals, both made better through their passionate love.
A deeply felt romance with weighty stakes.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9798217188512
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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 heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.
Two struggling authors spend the summer writing and falling in love in a quaint beach town.
January Andrews has just arrived in the small town of North Bear Shores with some serious baggage. Her father has been dead for a year, but she still hasn’t come to terms with what she found out at his funeral—he had been cheating on her mother for years. January plans to spend the summer cleaning out and selling the house her father and “That Woman” lived in together. But she’s also a down-on-her-luck author facing writer’s block, and she no longer believes in the happily-ever-after she’s made the benchmark of her work. Her steadily dwindling bank account, though, is a daily reminder that she must sell her next book, and fast. Serendipitously, she discovers that her new next-door neighbor is Augustus Everett, the darling of the literary fiction set and her former college rival/crush. Gus also happens to be struggling with his next book (and some serious trauma that unfolds throughout the novel). Though the two get off to a rocky start, they soon make a bet: Gus will try to write a romance novel, and January will attempt “bleak literary fiction.” They spend the summer teaching each other the art of their own genres—January takes Gus on a romantic outing to the local carnival; Gus takes January to the burned-down remains of a former cult—and they both process their own grief, loss, and trauma through this experiment. There are more than enough steamy scenes to sustain the slow-burn romance, and smart commentary on the placement and purpose of “women’s fiction” joins with crucial conversations about mental health to add multiple intriguing layers to the plot.
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0673-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Jove/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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