A beautiful exploration of both grief and romance starring a lovably hilarious heroine.
Desperate for a baby, a single woman attempts to find a partner through a website for potential co-parents—but when feelings develop, things get complicated.
Lucie Yi knows she wants a child, but her journey to parenthood has been bumpy. After having a miscarriage, she suffers another devastating blow when her boyfriend cheats on her. She flees Singapore to work in New York City, where she can deal with her grief far away from reminders of her old life. But with her biological clock ticking louder and louder, Lucie knows she needs to act fast if she wants the baby she’s always dreamed of. The dating pool isn’t offering any potential fathers, but then she discovers Co-Family.com, a platform that one of her friends describes as “Tinder for would-be parents.” A platonic co-parenting situation is just what Lucie wants—she can’t deal with another heartbreak. When she meets Collin, she knows he’ll make the perfect father for her child. He’s willing to move to Singapore, where she wants to raise their child, and best of all, she doesn’t have any pesky feelings for him. But when she gets pregnant and they make the move back to her home country, things get complicated. Because of the intense social stigma around unwed mothers in Singapore, Lucie and Collin have to tell her parents that they’re going to get married. And then Lucie’s cheating ex, Mark, shows up. He claims he’s changed and wants to be together, but spending so much time with Collin has made Lucie realize that she might want other things. Should Lucie take the unconventional path with Collin and risk screwing up their platonic co-parenting situation, or should she fall into the safe comfort of Mark’s arms? Ho delicately balances grief, romance, and humor. There are many laugh-out-loud lines (including Lucie’s thoughts as her body changes during pregnancy), but Lucie’s sorrow over what she lost—both a baby and her imagined future—always rings true. This is best shown in a particularly touching scene in which Lucie attends a support group for grieving parents.
A beautiful exploration of both grief and romance starring a lovably hilarious heroine.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-42226-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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