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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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