SUMMER IN THE CITY

When a summer heat wave in New York City causes an extended blackout, three friends each find herself stuck with the last person she anticipated.

Best friends Ria Preston, Vanessa Ríos, and Alison Cahill have a plan: They'll beat the heat by fleeing the city for a much-needed girls trip. All they have to do is make it through the next few hours of their respective evenings. Art restorer Ria is attending a benefit at the Met, theater critic Vanessa is taking a front-row seat at a Broadway play, and Alison has a scheme to throw a wrench or two into an aspiring magician's act. But there are unforeseen complications to events that would otherwise go off without a hitch, including the plot twist of a sudden blackout that rolls through Manhattan and leaves them each stranded with an unexpected party. For Ria, it's the chance to finally get to know her longtime crush, Wall Street consultant Vic Albright, the man she's always admired from a distance but has been too shy to approach. Vanessa is forced to confront someone from her past—actor Mateo Garza—whose career faltered after she gave his last play a bad review. And Alison's connection to magician Nicholas Finn runs much deeper than the rest of his audience realizes—years ago, in college, he broke her heart, and she's never fully moved on. The conceit of a blackout offers a delicious forced-proximity element to each novella, although the friendship throughline is somewhat weakened by taking place through only a handful of text-based interactions. Ultimately, the romance is where these stories truly ignite, with varying levels of angst and heat.

A steamy trio of rom-com stories that is best savored slowly.