With insights on the immigrant experience but not on love, this is hardly a romance to remember.
Two Canadian immigrants struggling with the past have a one-night stand with long-term consequences.
Azere has been a good Nigerian Canadian girl all her life and can’t let a steamy encounter with a stranger derail her commitment to preserving her birth culture. But when Spanish Canadian Rafael Castellano reenters her life, she weakens in her resolve to marry a fellow Nigerian, one selected by her obnoxious, widowed mom. Yet the habit of family obedience is hard to break, and Rafael’s secrets make her wonder if choosing heart over heritage is a mistake. Igharo’s debut has some evocative passages on the heroine’s memories of Nigeria and on Edo culture. The sections on Azere’s experiences as an immigrant tween and the novel’s depiction of the strains on biracial relationships are also valuable for representing a reality that many never know. But the story of an immigrant who is expected to marry within her community is narrated with more melodrama than fresh perspective. The demonization and eventual repentance of Azere’s conservative mom is wince-inducing, and Rafael’s secret, which is easy to guess, is a needless complication of an overwrought plot. Azere’s character could also have used some revision: She lacks emotional intelligence and conceals her inner life from everyone, which could be attributed to being 25 but can’t be squared with her job as a high-powered creative director leading a large team in a major ad agency. Igharo's writing is still in a developmental stage, with more telling than showing and characters repeatedly asking Azere if she’s OK, presumably because she’s staring into space during an inner monologue. This is symptomatic of a wider weakness with the dialogue, which is frequently brief and stilted. The first sex scene is off-page, which is unusual in a contemporary romance, and the plot’s excessive reliance on romantic movie references plus tropes from category romance suggests a lack of confidence rather than metatextual deftness.
With insights on the immigrant experience but not on love, this is hardly a romance to remember.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-10194-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.
Two people with bad luck in relationships find each other through a popular Reddit thread.
Emma Grant and her best friend, Maddy, are travel nurses, working at hospitals for three-month stints while they see the country. Just a few weeks before they’re set to move to Hawaii, Emma reads a popular “Am I the Asshole” Reddit thread from a Minnesota man who thinks he’s cursed—women he dates find their soulmates after breaking up with him, and the latest one found true love with his best friend! Emma has had a similar experience, which inspires her to DM the man and commiserate. She’s delighted by her witty, lively interactions with software engineer Justin Dahl, and is intrigued when he suggests that if they date each other, maybe they’ll each find their soulmate afterward. Emma upends the Hawaii plan and convinces Maddy to move to Minneapolis for the summer so she can meet Justin in person. The overly complex setup brings Emma and Justin together and the two hit it off, with Justin immediately falling head over heels for Emma. Jimenez then pivots to creating romantic roadblocks and melodramatic subplots centering on each character’s family of origin. Justin’s mother is about to serve six years in prison for embezzlement, which means Justin must move back home to care for his three much younger siblings. Emma was traumatized by her own mother for much of her childhood, left to fend for herself and eventually abandoned in the foster system. When her mother shows up in Minnesota, Emma must face her traumatic childhood and admit that she has prioritized her mother’s well-being over her own. There is little time devoted to Emma’s painful efforts to heal herself enough to accept Justin’s love, which leaves the novel feeling unsatisfying.
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781538704431
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
SEEN & HEARD
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