An equally silly and serious Georgian-era romance.
An antiquarian climbs out of the pit she’s excavating and finds more than she’s expecting aboveground.
Miss Georgina Harrington is frustrated with her cousin Percy Pendergrast, even though he’s the best of all her relatives. It’s not his fault she’s forced to stay hidden in Essex while he presents her discoveries under his name, but it still stings. When he disappears with her greatest find yet, she’s irritated and then worried, and she heads to London to find him. Instead, she finds Alexander Lovett, the gentleman who accompanied Percy on his last visit to her dig. When he begins to helps her search, and just as they’re enjoying a little flirtation, she learns that Alexander is better known as the Marquess of Heathford and that she’s been engaged to marry him by his stuffed shirt of a father and her detestable brother. Georgie is upset and Alexander refuses to do anything his father thinks is a good idea, but they’re both anxious to find Percy, so they come back together to look for him. They discover that there’s a dark conspiracy behind his disappearance—and that although their families arranged their marriage for all the wrong reasons, they may be meant for each other after all. Fans of Lady Charlotte Always Gets Her Man (2024) will be excited to see the notorious pub the Black Sheep pop up early on, as it signals certain chaos and cameos from beloved characters. The entire story is immensely entertaining, though it’s uneven in places, caught as it is between suspense, goofiness, and a great deal of spice. For those who like the combination, it will be exciting, but it can also lead to a bit of whiplash. Alexander has a clubfoot, which allows Marsh to respectfully depict life with a disability in the 1750s. And no reader will be able resist the joy caused by the unexpected number of chickens in this story, found both outdoors where they belong and in nice parlors.
An equally silly and serious Georgian-era romance.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781538739631
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.
Two people with bad luck in relationships find each other through a popular Reddit thread.
Emma Grant and her best friend, Maddy, are travel nurses, working at hospitals for three-month stints while they see the country. Just a few weeks before they’re set to move to Hawaii, Emma reads a popular “Am I the Asshole” Reddit thread from a Minnesota man who thinks he’s cursed—women he dates find their soulmates after breaking up with him, and the latest one found true love with his best friend! Emma has had a similar experience, which inspires her to DM the man and commiserate. She’s delighted by her witty, lively interactions with software engineer Justin Dahl, and is intrigued when he suggests that if they date each other, maybe they’ll each find their soulmate afterward. Emma upends the Hawaii plan and convinces Maddy to move to Minneapolis for the summer so she can meet Justin in person. The overly complex setup brings Emma and Justin together and the two hit it off, with Justin immediately falling head over heels for Emma. Jimenez then pivots to creating romantic roadblocks and melodramatic subplots centering on each character’s family of origin. Justin’s mother is about to serve six years in prison for embezzlement, which means Justin must move back home to care for his three much younger siblings. Emma was traumatized by her own mother for much of her childhood, left to fend for herself and eventually abandoned in the foster system. When her mother shows up in Minnesota, Emma must face her traumatic childhood and admit that she has prioritized her mother’s well-being over her own. There is little time devoted to Emma’s painful efforts to heal herself enough to accept Justin’s love, which leaves the novel feeling unsatisfying.
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781538704431
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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