A fairly standard romance bolstered by intriguing characters and a lush setting.
A young woman finds herself drawn into the seductive world of the Hamptons in Murray and Fahrie’s novel.
Lindsey is a 30-year-old New Yorker working at a PR firm. Her life is turned upside down one night when a man follows her home and assaults her in her apartment. If not for the quick action of a friendly neighbor and his vicious guard dog, Lindsey would have been raped or worse—but the event still leaves its mark. She flees the city to her aunt’s country house in Westchester, hoping to recover, finding it impossible to return to Manhattan. (“My shiny Big Apple wonderland had shriveled up like a piece of dried fruit,” she muses.) When her ex-boyfriend Karl Tuck proposes that she follow him back to Southampton, Lindsey is hesitant to fall back into bad habits with the seductive and smug Karl, but he assures her that their relationship will be all business as he works to mount a festival for the Hamptons’ wealthy elite and provides her with an excuse to stay out of the city. As the two find themselves in the office together, Lindsey can’t help but wonder how long it will be before she’s be back in his bed as well. (“He was an addiction and I was an addict in danger of slipping back because I’d returned to the old bad neighborhood too soon,” she thinks as passionate memories consume her thoughts.) Lindsey tries to focus instead on her kooky neighbor, Jasmine Fournier, a wild free spirit who shops at vintage stores and seems to know everyone in town. She confesses to Linsdey early on that she has a secret, but as with the Hamptons setting itself, it will take Lindsey time to fully understand all the intricate details. She immerses herself in the world of the wealthy and the region’s unique history, hoping to bring a touch of art and culture to Karl’s festival. Along the way, she encounters the enigmatic Colin Preston; as Lindsey struggles to sort out her feelings, she also finds herself drawn to the handsome stranger and his eccentric Hamptons family.
The Hamptons provide a breathtaking backdrop for a romance, and they lend the narrative a softer, more inviting ambiance through Lindsey’s thoughtful focus on history and nature—it’s a nice contrast to the glitz and glamour that readers might expect. The harmony of the beaches has an uneasy undertone to it, however; Lindsey’s attack is so vivid and brutal that readers will be expecting monsters or murders behind every sand dune, a tension that clashes with the much gentler, conventional romantic stakes the book eventually settles into. Lindsey’s memories of passionate hotel room nights with Karl are steamy enough to keep pulses racing, and Jasmine is a fabulous creation bringing fun, mystery, and vulnerability to the proceedings. (In one of the book’s best moments, when Jasmine learns her beloved employer is on his deathbed, she rushes immediately in the opposite direction to steal his book collection, howling, “I won’t let this opportunity slip through my fingers. Not this time. Yes! Yes! I deserve everything.”) Lindsey herself is a strong heroine—her flaws and weakness for Karl’s muscles included. Fans of the romance genre might not uncover any major surprises following her around the ritzy world of the Hamptons, but she still offers them a lot to love.
A fairly standard romance bolstered by intriguing characters and a lush setting.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.
Two ambitious athletes plus one fake-dating arrangement—what could go wrong?
Though it’s only his first season for the Boston Bearcats hockey team, Robbie Corrigan has a well-established reputation as a playboy. He’s got major skills on the ice, and he’s also much more likely to love ’em and leave ’em than he is to build any long, meaningful relationships. Naturally, he’s just met the one woman who seems completely resistant to his charm: Skylar Page, a Boston University softball pitcher. When they meet over a friendly Saturday morning baseball game, Robbie instantly makes a poor impression by bragging to his teammates about his latest conquest within Skylar’s hearing. He thinks she’s gorgeous, though, and when he sets his sights on her, he’s surprised that she doesn’t seem to know it. Despite her initial distaste for Robbie, Skylar grudgingly confesses that she could use his help. If they pretend to date, maybe her current crush—her brother’s best friend—will finally sit up and take notice of her in a romantic way. The timing is less than ideal, since Robbie will have to team up with Skylar in the Page family’s latest wilderness competition, but it turns out that Robbie’s willingness to play fake boyfriend stems from some very real feelings. He wants to prove to her that he’s a changed man, and redeeming himself in her eyes starts with making sure she knows that she can really trust him. The latest addition to Bailey’s Big Shots series is a sexy, feel-good romance brimming over with the author’s trademark humor and dirty talk. While Skylar and Robbie’s dynamic doesn’t quite reach the level of enemies-to-lovers—he’s so head-over-heels for her that there’s no room for any real mean-spiritedness—their playful snark doubles as a welcome dash of foreplay in the lead-up to some seriously steamy scenes. Robbie’s efforts to show Skylar that he’s turned over a new leaf also result in some of the book’s best moments, emphasizing his commitment to becoming the type of man he knows she deserves.
Bailey hits it out of the park with her latest spicy romance.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780063380837
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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