An interesting pairing is poorly served by uneven pacing and excessive monologuing.
A rabbi hoping to increase attendance at his synagogue asks a former sex worker to host a lecture series called “Modern Intimacy.”
Ethan Cohen’s Los Angeles shul might be struggling to stay afloat, but he loves his work and the people in his congregation. Although the board hired him to make changes, they are uncomfortable with the nontraditional programming he uses to attract new members. Naomi Grant is a former porn star and now co–CEO of Shameless, a web platform of instructional materials to help people have healthier sex lives. Naomi’s unorthodox background has made it difficult to find an educational institution willing to let her teach in-person adult sex education classes. When Ethan meets Naomi at a professional conference, he asks if she would be willing to teach an eight-week seminar at his synagogue. Naomi seizes the opportunity; she hasn’t been to synagogue since her bat mitzvah and has been longing to reconnect with Judaism. Ethan and Naomi’s love story explicitly follows the arc of the Modern Intimacy lecture series, but the pacing suffers as a result. Their romance is full of stops and starts, driven by Danan’s choice to have an external structure rather than organic character growth move the plot. Threads are introduced, dropped, and then reappear suddenly. Several times, Naomi and Ethan reveal their emotional states by lecturing to an audience, even if the other isn’t present. It’s ironic that characters committed to intimacy disclose their feelings in long speeches instead of showing them through action or direct communication with their partner; consequently, their relationship feels flat and underdeveloped. The exploration of faith and identity will likely appeal to contemporary romance readers looking for a full-bodied, nuanced treatment of religion that is also nonjudgmental and sex-positive.
An interesting pairing is poorly served by uneven pacing and excessive monologuing.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-10162-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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
A satisfying crime novel with a side order of romance.
A TV producer and a detective try to stop a strange pattern of young women disappearing.
In “Auclair, Loooziana,” disillusioned detective John Bowie reluctantly meets in a bar with Beth Collins, producer for the true crime show Crisis Point. She needs to interview him about the disastrous case of the missing Crissy Mellin, but he refuses. The teenager disappeared three years ago on the night of a blood moon and hasn’t been found, but a suspect hanged himself in jail after signing a confession. Case closed, says John’s boss. But John is convinced that their prisoner could not have been guilty, and he’s deeply upset at his failure. “The Mellin case messed up your life,” Beth tells him. She persuades John that Crissy’s disappearance is the latest of a series that happen on the night of a blood moon, the colloquial term for a total lunar eclipse. “It’s going to happen again,” she predicts. And wouldn’t you know, another blood moon is coming in four days. Tick, tick, tick. Beth’s boss at Crisis Point insists on airing an update on the case, but Beth knows the show is going to get it wrong, and its reputation will be ruined. Meanwhile, there’s an electric sexual tension between Beth and John that the author toys with nicely—do they, or don’t they? The answer plays out in detail more than once. The characters are fun if easy to pigeonhole: the detective angry at his failure, the honest (and beautiful) outsider eager to do her job but susceptible to love, the hero’s corrupt (to say the least) boss, and the ogre who carries out said boss’s dirtiest deeds. Even John’s dog, Mutt, plays a small but vital role. When John found him, he’d been “a flea-bitten hide wrapped around a skeleton that whimpered.” Little plot devices are easy to spot, like the phone that rings at a crucial moment, or the handgun that John places in Beth’s hand for her protection. Does Chekhov’s guideline apply here? The romantic angle leavens the dark theme, and readers will have plenty of incentives to turn the pages.
A satisfying crime novel with a side order of romance.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781538742983
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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