A fizzy tale about an entirely inappropriate but entertaining love affair.
A mentally ill woman meets the world’s hottest psychiatrist in this giddy romance.
Twenty-year-old Mercy Kavanaugh has been in and out of mental hospitals since she was abandoned in childhood by her parents. They were members of a religious sect who thought her violent hallucinations, which felt as if she was being skewered with nails and burned with acid, were caused by demonic possession. She and the rest of the psych ward are shaken up by the arrival of Dr. Travis Sutton, a new psychiatrist who, with his tousled hair, jeans, and muscle T-shirts, looks more like a Hugo Boss model than a shrink. Sutton good-naturedly parries Mercy’s defensive snark and soon declares a breakthrough: She’s not suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, as previously diagnosed, but from PTSD caused by the cultic abuse she suffered as a girl. He takes her off antipsychotics, reviving her libido, and applies his signature treatment of cradling her in his arms and soothing her tears after she has nightmares. Coached by her gal pals, Mercy tries seducing Sutton with outrageous sex talk during their sessions and, to make him jealous, a flirtation with a male patient. As she stampedes over Sutton’s weak protestations about transference and his medical license, passionate make-out sessions ensue with much groping and fondling. Alas, their love is threatened by federal regulations that will age her out of the hospital on her 21st birthday and into a halfway house. Decker’s yarn features an ideal lover, a dreamboat who’s fascinated by every wrinkle of the hero’s psyche in addition to her body, set in a glamorized rendition of a mental health facility that’s full of good-looking patients who don’t even seem crazy, just oversexed. The author’s skillful prose plangently evokes Mercy’s loneliness and fear of abandonment in the novel’s opening. (“Following each return to the unit, each searing disappointment, I let go of a little more hope,” Mercy muses of her rejections by foster families. “Once I was all hollowed out, I understood that no one would save me.”) After Dr. Sexy perks her up, though, the writing takes on a salacious energy and cheer. (He: “I have something for you.” She: “Is it a vibrator?”) Readers will root for Mercy’s campaign to undermine the psychiatric profession’s code of ethics.
A fizzy tale about an entirely inappropriate but entertaining love affair.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7329645-2-5
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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