A sports romance that captures the highs and lows of the game of love.
A grieving widow is caught off guard by her attraction to an NBA star.
Ever since her husband died seven months ago, entrepreneur Davina Klein-Roberts has devoted herself to running her beauty business, hoping to manage her crushing sadness. But when she makes an endorsement deal with Deke Bishop—a cocky and successful basketball player—he shocks her out of her depression. Deke works hard on the court and likes to enjoy the fruits of his stardom off it, but he’s never been with someone who has Davina’s combination of work ethic, beauty, and overall goodness. Even when she warns him that she’s not looking for anything other than friendship, he can’t stop himself from asking for more. Both Davina and Deke have difficult childhood memories—parental neglect, domestic violence, even a sibling’s suicide—so their ability to trust is limited and their road to happily-ever-after far from easy. They start a friends-with-benefits arrangement, but it’s clear that neither will be able to separate their bodies from their hearts. Known for writing domestic thrillers, Williams shows herself to be deft at narrating this challenging path, with fully fleshed-out characters whose anxieties and actions feel true to life. She alternates teary moments, which might evoke Emily Henry, with sizzling sex scenes and charming dates, including a one-on-one game of basketball that proves Davina and Deke have both met their match.
A sports romance that captures the highs and lows of the game of love.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781662518881
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.
A Seattle woman meets a Chicago businessman as she flies home from a visit to a friend, and her small act of kindness blossoms into more.
Maisy Gallagher is barely making ends meet. With her father’s unexpected death a few years earlier, she dropped out of nursing school to help out in the family’s jewelry store, working with her uncle. Her older brother, Sean, also moved back home so he and Maisy could help their mother and their 10-year-old brother, Patrick. When Maisy offers a ride to a rude businessman who sat next to her on the plane, she’s just operating on the kindness her grandmother instilled in her. That businessman, Chase Furst, turns out to be an incredibly wealthy banker; he’s flown into Seattle to make funeral arrangements for his mother, to whom he hasn’t spoken in years. Sparks fly in this gentle and predictable romance that leans heavily on long-distance and class-divide tropes. As with many of the author’s books, Christianity and the characters’ reliance on God’s will—as they wait and see what happens next—play a large part, as do traditional gender roles where women cook, clean, and only work in paying jobs until they have children at home to take care of. The author does offer a lighter touch when it comes to the painful ways alcoholism can destroy family relationships, with an understanding of the regret that can weigh on every family member.
Light on plot and heavy on bolstering traditional gender norms as the ultimate goal for both men and women.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091676
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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
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