A jaunty and sexy twist on a classic.
Pride and Prejudice...if the heroine wore pasties.
Elizabeth Bennet is a self-proclaimed woman of many names—Bennet to friends, Lizard to family, Liz at her day job, and Kitten when she moonlights. Bennet spends her weekdays as an executive assistant at a startup and her weekends “kittening” for a burlesque show at Meryton, a Tribeca club. Bennet’s duties involve picking up discarded undies and other scanty regalia after the performances of her co-workers, including her BFF Jane Okogu, the aerialists Ginn and Tonic, and Renaissance woman Ming DyNasty. When handsome and aloof patron Will Darcy catches Bennet’s eye, she foresees a more interesting end to her night than expected. That is, until she overhears him damningly describe her as “thoroughly tolerable.” As it turns out, Darcy’s friend Charles Bingley—Jane’s new love interest—and Meryton manager Andrea are trying to buy the property, and Bennet must move past the trauma that ended her previous career as an interior designer and follow her dreams: “Now Andrea is buying the building. And renovating....A thrill dances up my spine at the prospect....Meryton has facilitated so much good in my life; the least I can do is contribute to this new chapter of its story.” As Bennet works to overcome her insecurities, she must also contend with the arrival of the witty, if poorly dressed, George Wickham, whose questionable motives and troubled past with Darcy are slowly revealed. While King’s attempts at Austen-ian repartee feel largely superfluous to her otherwise deft and fun storytelling, this is nonetheless an original take on the source material, filled with three-dimensional characters.
A jaunty and sexy twist on a classic.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-33071-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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