A winning Regency that centers kin and community alongside true love.
A lecture on ophthalmology leads two people to see each other differently.
Scarlett Wilcox is happy to be a spinster, but she’ll begrudgingly marry as long as she gets to keep focusing on her true passion: medicine. Accordingly, the Duke of Torrance, a family friend, is doing his best to find a man who won’t mind marrying a woman who regularly dresses in men’s clothing so she can attend Royal Society medical lectures and develop into a physician in her own right. One man, Stephen Adam Carew, keeps popping up in her life, but he’s not marriage material—most of their conversations consist of bickering about one thing or another. Like Scarlett, he’s focused on just one thing: in his case, helping his community by working himself into exhaustion as a doctor. As he was born in Trinidad and she’s an Englishwoman from a rich Jamaican family, their communities overlap somewhat, and their mutual interest in medicine brings them together repeatedly—and an unexpected post-lecture adventure ending at Madame Rosebud’s notorious brothel inspires surprisingly amorous feelings in both. But even then, their genius and stubbornness may keep them from admitting what everyone else can see—that they’re perfectly suited for one another. This second volume of Riley’s Betting Against the Duke series is, like the author’s other romances, set against a diverse, well-sketched Regency background. An extensive author’s note reveals the research behind the historical details Riley threads through the story, which are combined with strong character development and her bold writing style to great effect. Despite that early brothel scene, the intimacy on the page doesn’t go beyond intense kissing, and the plot underscores the fact that for Scarlett and Stephen, devotion to their ideals is as important as affection for each other. Riley’s tendency to throw the reader into a story with a lot of information and little explanation may confuse some, especially due to the large number of beloved friends and family who are introduced early on, but those who stick with it will be rewarded with a unique and satisfying tale.
A winning Regency that centers kin and community alongside true love.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781420154863
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Zebra/Kensington
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.
After purchasing a dilapidated, century-old starship called the Destitute, Torian Razner discovers that the moss covering it is, in fact, a deeply sarcastic sentient computer with abandonment issues.
Torian’s sister, Celise, is dying. Determined to save her life by getting her to a distant planet with air she can breathe, Torian ignores her former captain Amelia Perrosk’s warning that it’s an impossible task (along with any romantic feelings she might have for Amelia). Using the only ionite bars she has to her name, Torian purchases an ancient, moss-covered alien starship that appears to be on its last legs, so to speak. She hardly expected the moss to be a sentient computer or for it to hold a century-old grudge against its former alien captain. Moss quickly proves itself to be acerbic, intelligent, and rightly angry after being having been left behind for 100 years by its former captain. The two form a reluctant and surprising alliance, Torian proving to Moss that not all captains are “dog-turd fungus,” and they both gradually evolve into the best versions of themselves, human or otherwise. It’s obvious from the early pages that Thorne has crafted a story tailored to fans of Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. Falling somewhere between the two, this is a delightful mashup of romance, found family, and a touch of violence as Moss grapples with its feelings about its former captain and the unexpected kindness that Torian shows. Sweet without being overly saccharine, it’s a book for readers who want the adventure that comes with the vastness of outer space without its harsher realities.
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414144
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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