An endearing romance that sensitively depicts the poignancy of loss and reconciliation.
A traumatized Indian American chef is pushed over the edge when she reencounters her teenage love in this modern-day interpretation of Persuasion.
Ashna Raje, daughter of Prince Bram of Sripore, is struggling to breathe life into her late father's luxury restaurant. Once the most popular Indian outlet in Palo Alto, Curried Dreams is now running the risk of closure. Ashna needs money to save her father's legacy and a job to keep her overachieving mother out of her hair. So when she's offered a role on Cooking With the Stars, a reality TV show that pairs celebrities with professional chefs for a range of culinary challenges, Ashna decides to overcome her natural reticence and join the cast. But old wounds resurface when Ashna is partnered with award-winning international soccer star Rico Silva, her high school boyfriend. Since their relationship had been uncommonly intense, Rico and Ashna are still nursing scars from their painfully abrupt separation. With his return to her life, Ashna is forced to confront not only her painful past, but also her strained relationship with her mother, Shoban. As Ashna's story unravels alongside her mother's, the novel deftly unpacks some of the ways in which Indian women's experiences of oppression have changed with time, though Dev details Shoban's crusade against patriarchy with much more empathy and insight than her daughter's. The second installment in the Raje Family series, following Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors (2019), is ripe with an insider's understanding of Indian, specifically Maharashtrian, culture: luscious references to traditional food and attire jostle with bitter reminders of several deeply entrenched social and religious biases. As Dev swaps Austen's Regency England for aristocratic India, she credibly builds a world in which social privilege insulates upper-class and upper-caste men from the consequences of their actions.
An endearing romance that sensitively depicts the poignancy of loss and reconciliation.Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-283907-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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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