The immaturity of the main characters sours some sizzling banter.
An aspiring writer butts heads with a stuffy academic as they’re routinely thrown together to celebrate their best friends’ milestones.
Natalie Shapiro is surprised when her longtime best friend, Gabby, says yes to a proposal from her boyfriend, Angus; they haven’t been dating for long and don’t even live together. Natalie meets Rob Kapinsky, Angus’ best friend, at the couple’s surprise engagement party. Sparks fly immediately when the two strike up a conversation: Rob is pursuing a Ph.D. in linguistics on the West Coast, and Natalie is a writer who’s decided not to get an MFA since she’s already working several jobs to pay off her student debt; although they both obviously love language and reading, they don’t see eye to eye when it comes to writing and academia. They reunite for Gabby and Angus’ wedding, where it’s revealed that Rob had panned Natalie’s debut novel on Goodreads, leading to a string of further bad reviews and jeopardizing a future book deal. This begins a pattern of Rob and Natalie turning up in each other’s lives at the behest of their friends and, despite sniping at one another, finding an attraction between them. The banter is fantastic, but Rob and Natalie are less than compelling leads. They’re rude, judgmental, and classist. For example, Natalie makes snide remarks about Angus’ looks in her internal monologue, which she uses to create a thinly veiled character in her first book. Rob is an academic from an academic family and clearly has some misconceptions about the “uneducated.” It will take a lot of work to get past these initial impressions; while the characters do inevitably grow and change to achieve their happily-ever-after, the experience isn’t entirely pleasant for the reader.
The immaturity of the main characters sours some sizzling banter.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780593438213
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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