A textbook summer read that combines romance, legal drama, and vibrant Indian culture.
Two lawyers try to put their steamy past behind them when they’re assigned to the same high-profile case.
Naina Shetty has no time for romance. If she did, she wouldn’t have become the best junior legal associate at Akhtar, Kumble & Co. in Bangalore, India, or be the top pick for a major promotion as the only woman on her team. Naina is a self-proclaimed workaholic with little time for relationships, which she swore off for good after last year’s sexy summer fling. Reeling from a broken engagement, Naina found herself in Goa 17 months ago in search of two weeks of no-strings-attached fun. She found it with her handsome hostel roommate, Tejas, who was nursing his own broken heart following his ex-boyfriend’s wedding. Together, they ran through the items on Naina’s Anti-Honeymoon Checklist, including skinny-dipping, attending a rave, and kissing a stranger. When the summer ended, so did their fling, and neither expected to see each other again. But then Tejas unknowingly takes a position at Naina’s firm, where they’re placed on the same assignment—a high-profile Bollywood murder scandal. As Naina and Tejas work together to uncover the details of the Preethi Acharya case, they discover that a relationship they’d thought was just casual might be something much deeper. Are they willing to let the sparks between them catch fire, or are they too afraid of getting burned again? Hegde’s latest romance follows two unlucky-in-love people afraid that committing means getting hurt again. Naina and Tejas embody the phrase "opposites attract," with her studious perseverance and his sunny demeanor, and it’s refreshing, if slightly out of character, to see them let loose in the flashback scenes as they navigate heartbreak and hookup culture. As a second-chance romance, their journey will be rewarding to readers who want to see them face their relationship anxieties head on and come out stronger.
A textbook summer read that combines romance, legal drama, and vibrant Indian culture.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798217092031
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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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