An action-packed romp that brings the thrills but slows the romance.
An American woman agrees to play body double for a European prime minister on the Amalfi Coast, bringing a former fling back into her life.
At 29, Margaux “Max” Adams isn’t just down on her luck: her pot of gold is bone dry. Following the pandemic—and after having borrowed thousands of dollars from her family and friends—the former chef was forced to close Frida’s, her dream restaurant in Maine. After moving into a shoebox apartment with a perpetually stoned, ranch-dressing-loving roommate and isolating herself from her loved ones, Max now lugs boxed wine out of vans for a second-rate catering company. Then, at a wedding she’s working, she’s approached by a woman who says Max reminds her of Sofia Christensen, an assertive 30-year-old powerhouse who was recently named prime minister of a country called Summerland. While their life paths couldn’t be more different, Max is aware that she and Sofia look eerily alike, almost as if they were long-lost sisters. Max would never have imagined crossing paths with the PM, but now the strange woman—who turns out to be a CIA agent—gives her an offer she can’t refuse: Pretend to be Sofia while the government works to prevent an assassination plot, and receive $5 million for her trouble. All Max has to do is relax on a beach in Positano—under the guise of a vacationing prime minister with laryngitis, in case she can’t master a Summerlandian accent—and soon she’ll be able to pay her friends and family back every penny she borrowed. It sounds simple enough, until Max learns that her CIA handler will be none other than Flynn Forester, with whom she had a teenage summer fling. With Flynn back in her life, the sudden disappearance of the real Sofia, and the looming threat of a Scandinavian organized crime group, Max is in for the summer of a lifetime. Walker’s adventure romance is a breezy read, full of hijinks and thwarted assassins, without any fear of actual death or danger. Max and Flynn have their sweet and steamy moments, but their relationship doesn’t get enough time on the page to make it satisfying.
An action-packed romp that brings the thrills but slows the romance.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593640418
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
A satisfying crime novel with a side order of romance.
A TV producer and a detective try to stop a strange pattern of young women disappearing.
In “Auclair, Loooziana,” disillusioned detective John Bowie reluctantly meets in a bar with Beth Collins, producer for the true crime show Crisis Point. She needs to interview him about the disastrous case of the missing Crissy Mellin, but he refuses. The teenager disappeared three years ago on the night of a blood moon and hasn’t been found, but a suspect hanged himself in jail after signing a confession. Case closed, says John’s boss. But John is convinced that their prisoner could not have been guilty, and he’s deeply upset at his failure. “The Mellin case messed up your life,” Beth tells him. She persuades John that Crissy’s disappearance is the latest of a series that happen on the night of a blood moon, the colloquial term for a total lunar eclipse. “It’s going to happen again,” she predicts. And wouldn’t you know, another blood moon is coming in four days. Tick, tick, tick. Beth’s boss at Crisis Point insists on airing an update on the case, but Beth knows the show is going to get it wrong, and its reputation will be ruined. Meanwhile, there’s an electric sexual tension between Beth and John that the author toys with nicely—do they, or don’t they? The answer plays out in detail more than once. The characters are fun if easy to pigeonhole: the detective angry at his failure, the honest (and beautiful) outsider eager to do her job but susceptible to love, the hero’s corrupt (to say the least) boss, and the ogre who carries out said boss’s dirtiest deeds. Even John’s dog, Mutt, plays a small but vital role. When John found him, he’d been “a flea-bitten hide wrapped around a skeleton that whimpered.” Little plot devices are easy to spot, like the phone that rings at a crucial moment, or the handgun that John places in Beth’s hand for her protection. Does Chekhov’s guideline apply here? The romantic angle leavens the dark theme, and readers will have plenty of incentives to turn the pages.
A satisfying crime novel with a side order of romance.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781538742983
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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