A well-developed love story that will make readers eager for a happily-ever-after.
In Saville’s romance novel, a movie star falls for a woman who’s working her way up the corporate ladder.
After giving yet another bad performance while filming a movie, Jake Laurent calls Kat Green, his friend and former pandemic bedmate, in a panic, asking her to come visit him on location in Denmark. Even though the two haven’t spoken in months, and it’s been at least a year since they were in each other’s presence, Kat, a busy executive at New York City–based PathMobile, finds a way to get to Copenhagen. Kat has her eye on the company’s chief operating officer position, which will be open soon, but she’s unfortunately lacking in international experience. A trip to Denmark would not only let her see Jake, but also highlight her skills at her company’s Denmark office. However, almost as soon as Jake arrives at the apartment they’re sharing, Kat finds herself completely distracted by him. To avoid drama from paparazzi following Jake around, and so Kat won’t be seen as unprofessional, the two come up with rules for their time together. The overall idea behind them is simple: “Whenever we can,” Kat says, “we should try to separate” while in public. At the same time, though, their physical attraction is more powerful than ever. In Saville’s contemporary romance, several familiar romance tropes collide to form an offbeat love story that will keep genre fans turning pages. The story starts out with the two main characters already in a relationship of sorts, and the author does a good job of catching readers up on their shared past, adding in vivid memories from their time together and effectively comparing past moments to their present interactions. Both Jake and Kat come off as authentic, and their worries and concerns regarding their work, their passions, and their relationships with others and each other ring true throughout. What makes this novel truly shine, though, is how the two work together to help each other realize their goals, frequently talking through problems to find solutions.
A well-developed love story that will make readers eager for a happily-ever-after.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781647428464
Page Count: 280
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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