A romance between charming characters is sidelined by weighty subplots.
A woman desperate to prove her value to her family’s house-flipping business falls in love with her foreman.
Bethany Castle used to embrace her perfectionist tendencies, but lately, those urges are starting to control her. Even a job she used to love—staging homes for her family’s Long Island construction business—has become stultifying and unsatisfying. Bethany dreams of leading her own project; she knows she's capable of more than selecting paint colors and arranging furniture. When her brother responds to her dream with derision, Bethany furiously quits the business. She starts her own project and hires handsome newcomer Wes Daniels as her foreman. Wes is a recent transplant from San Antonio. When his sister’s marriage disintegrated a few months earlier, she asked him to care for her 5-year-old daughter so she could get her head together. Wes has taken a job working construction, awed and bewildered at how, at 23, he’s settled down into sudden respectability and what feels a lot like fatherhood. Wes thinks his razor-sharp banter with Bethany is flirtation while Bethany is horrified at her wild attraction to a man seven years her junior. Catching wind of the Castle family feud, a TV producer persuades Bethany and her brother to appear on a reality TV show that will judge which one of them flips their house most successfully. Although Bailey creates likable characters and writes snappy dialogue, the subplots about the TV show and Wes’ guardianship of his niece interferes with Bethany and Wes’ emotional development as partners and lovers. The two are conquering their own demons on separate journeys, and their unevenly paced romance only flares to life in the final third of the book.
A romance between charming characters is sidelined by weighty subplots.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-287293-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A book that will wolfishly appeal to the most heated fans of omegaverse erotica.
Tess Covington is a talented, successful contractor who just learned that she’s a late-in-life omega wolf shifter. Her new boss, surly innkeeper Hunter Barrett, is an alpha who’s opposed to the remodeling she’s there to do.
Tess hasn’t made it public that she’s being considered for her own HGTV makeover show, but she runs her career like a well-oiled machine. She posts a lot of her remodels on social media, granting her a certain level of celebrity, and leans on her brothers to help run the business she took over after a stroke made it impossible for her father to keep working. Hunter’s last serious relationship with an omega 10 years ago left him deeply wounded, ending when his parents were killed in a car accident and he moved back home to take care of their lodge—hence his resistance to change. With few exceptions, Tess keeps her newly diagnosed omega status to herself. Unfortunately, as an alpha, Hunter sniffs her out and seems to be the only person capable of helping her with her sudden heats, so there’s a lot of very smutty caretaking. The specificity of omegaverse hierarchy might be new to some readers, but Ferguson’s worldbuilding is quick, easy, and deeply horny. General romance readers might enjoy the grumpy-meets-sunshine and stranded-in-a-snowstorm tropes, although for a book about shifters, the characters spend surprisingly little time in wolf form. There’s not much danger of character development or surprising plot elements here, but for fans excited to read about animalistic mating, that might be enough.
A book that will wolfishly appeal to the most heated fans of omegaverse erotica.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593953693
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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