An overstuffed rom-com with strong emotional depth.
In Alaska to escape her angry fans and write a murder mystery, a popular romance author finds the one thing she never expected: a chance for her own Happily Ever After.
Margot Bradley is known for her swoony love stories, but she doesn’t actually believe in true love; she secretly writes different, bitter endings for her characters, which she keeps in a document titled Happily Never After. When her computer is hacked and the file is released to the public, her fans turn on her and Margot finds herself canceled. To help her figure out what to do next, her sister, Savannah, who has a "cocktail of autoimmune disorders" and lives with Margot, books her a six-week stay at an Alaskan lodge—Margot had been planning to write a romance set in Alaska, but now she can take that trip to research a pivot, instead. When she arrives, Margot quickly realizes that not only is she in for a much more remote and rugged adventure than she’d expected, but the lodge’s proprietor seems to have walked right off the pages of one of her books. Dr. Forrest Wakefield has returned home to Alaska to care for his ailing father even though he was on the brink of a major breakthrough in cancer research back in Los Angeles. Now he spends his time working as his father’s personal physician and leading the guests on outdoorsy excursions. Forrest vowed to never get romantically involved with a guest, but his attraction to Margot keeps growing until it becomes impossible to ignore. This debut romance is beautifully written, nicely balancing humor and heat with realistic drama and conflict. Lavine is aiming for a meta-romance as Margot finds herself falling into various trope situations, but while these scenes are often funny, the book isn’t doing anything new with those tropes and they sometimes feel shoehorned in. Margot and Forrest’s roles as caretakers to their relatives, however, ground the story in deeper emotion and lead to refreshing attitude shifts and insights for the characters.
An overstuffed rom-com with strong emotional depth.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781668079270
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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
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