A delightfully trope-filled romance with a most deserving heroine.
A young widow makes a pact with a gaming hell owner: She’ll be his fake fiancee in exchange for sex lessons.
Readers of the previous books in the Gilded Age Heiresses series will remember Camille, who became Duchess of Hereford and served as a cautionary tale to the other heroines. Her parents forced the young American heiress into a marriage with a cruel, older, titled Englishman. Now that he’s dead, Camille gets a second chance to find happiness. She never experienced pleasure from lovemaking, so she propositions Jacob Thorne, owner of Montague Club. At first he declines, although not due to lack of interest in her, but when he's in need of a fiancee in order to secure an investor for a new enterprise, they make an agreement. This relationship is supposed to be purely physical for Camille, and Jacob always thought love was not for him, but eventually they both want more. Camille so deserves her happily-ever-after, and this exquisitely written story sensitively handles her growing awareness of the abuse she faced. It’s gratifying to witness her discover her own voice and power, both in the bedroom and in society. Her internal growth is aided by her new involvement in the fight for women’s suffrage, while her sexual journey takes time and realistically includes setbacks and frustrations. Jacob’s business plotline feels slight and less compelling, and his switch from not wanting a relationship to total devotion is abrupt, but his kindness makes him the perfect partner for Camille.
A delightfully trope-filled romance with a most deserving heroine.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780593440988
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.
Two struggling authors spend the summer writing and falling in love in a quaint beach town.
January Andrews has just arrived in the small town of North Bear Shores with some serious baggage. Her father has been dead for a year, but she still hasn’t come to terms with what she found out at his funeral—he had been cheating on her mother for years. January plans to spend the summer cleaning out and selling the house her father and “That Woman” lived in together. But she’s also a down-on-her-luck author facing writer’s block, and she no longer believes in the happily-ever-after she’s made the benchmark of her work. Her steadily dwindling bank account, though, is a daily reminder that she must sell her next book, and fast. Serendipitously, she discovers that her new next-door neighbor is Augustus Everett, the darling of the literary fiction set and her former college rival/crush. Gus also happens to be struggling with his next book (and some serious trauma that unfolds throughout the novel). Though the two get off to a rocky start, they soon make a bet: Gus will try to write a romance novel, and January will attempt “bleak literary fiction.” They spend the summer teaching each other the art of their own genres—January takes Gus on a romantic outing to the local carnival; Gus takes January to the burned-down remains of a former cult—and they both process their own grief, loss, and trauma through this experiment. There are more than enough steamy scenes to sustain the slow-burn romance, and smart commentary on the placement and purpose of “women’s fiction” joins with crucial conversations about mental health to add multiple intriguing layers to the plot.
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0673-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Jove/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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