Engaging characters with thorny problems have a pat, easy love story.
A professional hockey player falls in love with his tween daughter’s nanny.
Burgess Abraham is 37 and can feel himself aging out of hockey—everything hurts. He refuses to let the team doctors know the extent of his pain, worried it will force him into early retirement. Complicating his life, he’s recently divorced and has shared custody of his daughter, Lissa. Burgess’ punishing travel schedule means he needs help at home, so he hires 26-year-old graduate student Tallulah Aydin to be his daughter’s nanny. Tallulah just moved to Boston for a graduate program in marine biology. She’s flat broke and landing this gig is a financial lifesaver, but she worries that her incendiary chemistry with Burgess will make it hard to keep things professional. Burgess’ feelings of protectiveness toward Tallulah are amplified after she tells him about a traumatic incident from her past. Her move to Boston showed her that she’s been letting fear rule her life, that she’s reluctant to trust people and afraid to live. Burgess offers to help Tallulah check items off her bucket list of adventures, promising to accompany her and keep her safe. In return, Burgess wants to be her boyfriend, not just a casual fling. Unfortunately, Lissa is convinced her parents will get back together and sees Tallulah as an interloper. Bailey fans will find all the classic hallmarks of her style: a plucky heroine matched with a possessive, dirty-talking hero in a high-heat romance. Although the novel engages with deeper themes, its exploration of these difficult topics feels simplistic and superficial. Huge problems are introduced late in the story and then fixed offstage, without readers seeing the work and effort involved.
Engaging characters with thorny problems have a pat, easy love story.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063308435
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.
A heartbroken man lusts after his therapist while seeking revenge on a drug kingpin and his enforcer.
Mitch Haskell’s wife, Angela, died two years ago of an apparent suicide, but Mitch has always believed the scene was staged. Certainly, she would never have willingly left their young son, Andrew, behind. Consumed with a thirst for vengeance, Mitch—a former Marine and undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration and currently a police detective—is struggling with alcohol dependency and uncontrolled rage. Andrew is living with his in-laws, who are making not-so-subtle suggestions that they might apply for permanent guardianship if Mitch can’t get it together. So his boss and best friend, John Bowie, mandates that he go into therapy, which puts him in the path of sexy Dr. Dylan Reede. Within a few days, Mitch makes a connection between two new murders and the death of his former partner; finds a big clue that points to the truth about Angela’s death; goes undercover as a homeless man; takes on a vicious drug cartel; and obnoxiously bullies Dylan with a charm offensive that leads them inevitably to bed. While Mitch seems to lean into the stereotype of the ex-soldier/cop with deeply buried trauma who believes that the ends justify the means—at least in law enforcement—Dylan offers the strength and sweetness to help him start breaking down his walls, allowing herself to be vulnerable in turn. Is passionate sex enough to ground a relationship and a family for the long term? For these characters, and the breakneck speed of this thriller, it’s as good a foundation as any.
Two hot people confronting their trauma, making passionate love, and solving violent crimes! ’Nuff said.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781538743027
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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