A sweet and passionate love story, once it gets going.
A historical romance in which fate brings two childhood friends back together.
In 1807, 8-year-old Ophelia Darby falls into a river and is washed downstream. She’s saved by Niall, a young boy who jumps in after her and carries her to shore. Unsure of where they are, the children hide out in a small hunting cottage and become best friends before being rescued days later. Ophelia’s the daughter of an earl, and Niall’s a commoner, so they’re quickly separated, but they promise to always remember each other. Fifteen years later, Ophelia finds out that the woman who raised her isn’t her birth mother, and her family is in massive debt. She travels to a dangerous part of London on a search for her biological mother, where a mysterious man named Devlin Byrne offers his protection; the self-made, wealthy gentleman, whose middle name is Niall, recognizes his childhood friend immediately but is hesitant to reveal the truth. He asks friends to accompany her on her quest and even sends her some bank notes to cover her debts. Devlin longs for her to sing to him again, dance with him, and maybe even love him, but society would never allow a noblewoman to marry him. Then again, Ophelia never did do as she was told. In this third book in a series, Reid offers a fast-paced historical romance in which the characters are clearly passionate about not only each other, but also about their own life goals. The initial time skip—from when Devlin first sees Ophelia to months after he meets her again as an adult—gets the romance plotline off to an awkward start, and readers who are unfamiliar with the previous books in the series may find it frustrating that past events, such as a scandal involving Ophelia’s friend Maryann, are merely glossed over. However, newcomers who are willing to stick with the novel will find a fine romance that makes it easy to overlook any shortcomings.
A sweet and passionate love story, once it gets going.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64063-768-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK TO SCREEN
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.
An earnest grad student and a faculty member with a bit of a jerkish reputation concoct a fake dating scheme in this nerdy, STEM-filled contemporary romance.
Olive Smith and professor Adam Carlsen first met in the bathroom of Adam's lab. Olive wore expired contact lenses, reducing her eyes to temporary tears, while Adam just needed to dispose of a solution. It's a memory that only one of them has held onto. Now, nearly three years later, Olive is fully committed to her research in pancreatic cancer at Stanford University's biology department. As a faculty member, Adam's reputation precedes him, since he's made many students cry or drop their programs entirely with his bluntness. When Olive needs her best friend, Anh, to think she's dating someone so Anh will feel more comfortable getting involved with Olive's barely-an-ex, Jeremy, she impulsively kisses Adam, who happens to be standing there when Anh walks by. But rumors start to spread, and the one-time kiss morphs into a fake relationship, especially as Adam sees there's a benefit for him. The university is withholding funds for Adam's research out of fear that he'll leave for a better position elsewhere. If he puts down more roots by getting involved with someone, his research funds could be released at the next budgeting meeting in about a month's time. After setting a few ground rules, Adam and Olive agree that come the end of September, they'll part ways, having gotten what they need from their arrangement. Hazelwood has a keen understanding of romance tropes and puts them to good use—in addition to fake dating, Olive and Adam are an opposites-attract pairing with their sunny and grumpy personalities—but there are a couple of weaknesses in this debut novel. Hazelwood manages to sidestep a lot of the complicated power dynamics of a student-faculty romance by putting Olive and Adam in different departments, but the impetus for their fake relationship has much higher stakes for Adam. Olive does reap the benefits of dating a faculty member, but in the end, she's still the one seemingly punished or taunted by her colleagues; readers may have been hoping for a more subversive twist. For a first novel, there's plenty of shine here, with clear signs that Hazelwood feels completely comfortable with happily-ever-afters.
Fresh and upbeat, though not without flaws.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-33682-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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