An entertaining opposites-attract love story.
In this romance, a young woman spends years wondering about the handsome man she met during a fateful snowstorm only to discover that he’s her new boss and he’s nothing like she thought.
Just 20 years old, Sara Colbert was understandably frightened to be home alone in rural Tennessee during an aggressive snowstorm. After the power went out, it wasn’t her parents but a strange man who pounded on the door, seeking refuge after his car ran off the road. Sara spent one unforgettable night getting to know the attractive man in the candlelight, but by the next morning, he was gone. Worse yet, there was a tragic accident, and Sara’s family never made it home. Four years later, Sara is still dealing with the fallout. She’s part of the computer support staff at a company called Infonet, and it turns out her boss is none other than Darren Hartford, the man she met during the snowstorm. Darren claims never to have forgotten her, but Sara’s heard rumors about his rakish ways. She has too much responsibility already and cannot allow the kind of drama a man like Darren could bring into her life. He insists his intentions are pure and begins to wear her down. When a misunderstanding leads Darren to behave badly, Sara’s ready to write him off forever. But he learns the secrets she’s been keeping and realizes he can never let her go. Told in the third person, the novel alternates between Sara’s and Darren’s perspectives throughout the story. From the very start, the tale contains several moments that require a suspension of disbelief, as when Sara lets a stranger into her empty home with only the most minimal persuasion. Even so, Price provides sufficient details and background about the characters that the emotions and yearnings the couple experience feel authentic. The story’s supporting characters are also additive, as their needs and behavior shed light on the protagonists’ motivations. Certain moments feel overly rushed, lacking development as the author zooms through some plot points. But the speedy plot is still sufficiently engrossing that readers will enjoy hurrying along with the author to the tale’s inevitable conclusion.
An entertaining opposites-attract love story.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-980533-76-4
Page Count: 143
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 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
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