A twisty time-bending saga with an appealing lead and secondary characters.
The fates of a “virgin-geek” relationship advice columnist and the sexy ghost in her new apartment become intertwined in Ready’s contemporary paranormal romance novel.
Jillian Nejat, 27, moves into the NYC studio apartment that she has rented sight unseen. The place has mirrors everywhere, leading her to muse, “If I’d known my new apartment was a sex maniac’s love den, I would never have invited my parents along.” Jillian has “a terminal inability to speak to men,” which starts to change when a handsome ghost named Daniel, with whom she becomes comfortable talking to, appears in the apartment. Jillian visits a psychic, who senses Daniel’s energy (only Jillian can see him) and suggests that unfinished business is preventing his spirit from moving on. Daniel proceeds to assist Jillian, who rather ironically writes an advice column on love, dating, sex, and marriage for The Daily Exposé, in fielding romance queries and improving her columns. Then he disappears just as a decent dating prospect arises. Jillian is heartbroken, since she and Daniel were mutually attracted and had even progressed to paranormal-type sex. Weeks later, Jillian is overjoyed to see Daniel, alive and corporeal, at the Met. She rushes into his arms, but he doesn’t know her. She becomes convinced that time bending is at play and that she must save Daniel from dying to prevent him from becoming a ghost in the future. Daniel, who runs a Geneva-based watch company with his sister, is wary at first but eventually won over by Jillian’s persistence and charm. By novel’s end, the couple experience life-threatening dangers as well as—finally, and joyfully—true physical communion. A “second epilogue” offers further details about how Daniel got connected to Jillian.
Ready brings her trademark blend of lively tone, amusing details, heart-tugging romance, and adept plotting to this paranormal tale. Jillian transcends the clichéd, Cinderella-type innocent by also being funny (“If they’re living, if they’re breathing, it’s game over”) and an insightful SF fan (her Starfleet necklace turns out to be a significant accessory). Her fellow-geek best friend Serena, a particle physicist based (conveniently) in Geneva, serves as an explainer (of sorts) for the novel’s time-jumping construction. There’s an artful and enjoyable presentation of Jillian’s array of colleagues at The Daily Exposé, including a satisfying romance subplot and touching support for Jillian from the motley and usually warring crew by novel’s end. Daniel also hides depths beneath his obvious gifts of attractiveness and wealth. The narrative’s time-leaping logic is a bit challenging to follow, with a second epilogue further confusing and complicating matters. Still, Ready’s skill in maintaining the reader’s engagement with her plot and characters ultimately supersedes such concerns. “Daniel died, reached the Planck energy and then traveled through time and space to reach you,” Serena notes at one point in the narrative. “Why? How? We don’t know. But if logic only takes you so far, then what your heart is telling you must take you the rest of the way.”
A twisty time-bending saga with an appealing lead and secondary characters.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781954007611
Page Count: 490
Publisher: W.W. Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.
Two struggling authors spend the summer writing and falling in love in a quaint beach town.
January Andrews has just arrived in the small town of North Bear Shores with some serious baggage. Her father has been dead for a year, but she still hasn’t come to terms with what she found out at his funeral—he had been cheating on her mother for years. January plans to spend the summer cleaning out and selling the house her father and “That Woman” lived in together. But she’s also a down-on-her-luck author facing writer’s block, and she no longer believes in the happily-ever-after she’s made the benchmark of her work. Her steadily dwindling bank account, though, is a daily reminder that she must sell her next book, and fast. Serendipitously, she discovers that her new next-door neighbor is Augustus Everett, the darling of the literary fiction set and her former college rival/crush. Gus also happens to be struggling with his next book (and some serious trauma that unfolds throughout the novel). Though the two get off to a rocky start, they soon make a bet: Gus will try to write a romance novel, and January will attempt “bleak literary fiction.” They spend the summer teaching each other the art of their own genres—January takes Gus on a romantic outing to the local carnival; Gus takes January to the burned-down remains of a former cult—and they both process their own grief, loss, and trauma through this experiment. There are more than enough steamy scenes to sustain the slow-burn romance, and smart commentary on the placement and purpose of “women’s fiction” joins with crucial conversations about mental health to add multiple intriguing layers to the plot.
A heartfelt look at taking second chances, in life and in love.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0673-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Jove/Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
