An ardent love story that brims with sincerity and believable characters.
South Carolina teens fall in love, but their mismatched backgrounds may force them apart in Zurenda’s romance novel.
Hazel Smalls gets in-school suspension for a minor infraction regarding her JROTC uniform. It’s there that the high school junior surprisingly hits it off with senior Sterling Lovell, the scion of a rich family. Hazel doesn’t want Sterling to know that her home is a room in a “beat-up” local motel shared with her parents and kid sister (the situation is mostly due to her father’s DUI rendering him jobless). But Sterling may also have reason to be embarrassed, as his indifferent slumlord father owns that motel. Widowed English teacher Angela Witmore doesn’t miss what’s happening between these smitten teens, though she tries to stay out of her students’ personal affairs. Hazel and Sterling face many obstacles as they begin a romance, from their parents disrupting their lives (not always intentionally) to Sterling’s girlfriend, Courtney, who isn’t quite an “ex” when Sterling and Hazel start hanging out. The fledgling couple—with an unexpected assist from Angela—must fight to stay united. Zurenda populates this modern-day spin on a Romeo and Juliet pairing with superb characters: Hazel is resilient and selfless, while the privileged Sterling earns sympathy for his status as a former victim of bullying. The supporting cast is indelible, including the warmhearted Angela (who stumbles into romance of her own), Courtney’s spiteful preacher father, and Hazel’s ever-chatty sister, Chloe. The author’s effortless prose breathes life into every scene, even sequences as prosaic as Angela throwing together a spaghetti dinner and internally debating which wine to pair with it (“What did she care? The bottle of Chardonnay was already open”). Though a few of the plot turns are predictable, the ending packs a sensational dramatic punch.
An ardent love story that brims with sincerity and believable characters.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 978-0881469011
Page Count: 291
Publisher: Mercer Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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