A middling debut with a heroine who deserves better.
A prickly veteran and a sweet bed-and-breakfast owner butt heads in this small-town contemporary romance debut.
Sweetbriar Inn has been in June Wu's family for generations, but with tourism dwindling in Blue Cedar Falls, North Carolina, she's desperate to keep her guests happy. Her mother's medical bills are piling up and money is tight. When a string of noise complaints come in, she discovers that Main Street has a new addition. Clay Hawthorne is keeping his late friend Bug's dream alive. While in the Army, they would always talk about how Bug wanted to open a bar in his hometown. With Bug now gone, Clay is determined to carry out their plans, though he already carries with him a rather large chip on his shoulder about the townspeople. He dismisses June and the other residents as busybodies, and soon he's caught up in red tape involving liquor licenses and the local business association. Some see Clay as an outsider in their close-knit town, though there are a few—including June—who think Blue Cedar Falls could use a bit of shaking up. As in most small-town romances, there's a full cast of characters, from nosy neighbors to perky bakers, making the setting feel alive and truly lived in. The romance itself is the weakest part of the book, as Clay quickly turns from grumpy to downright rude. He outright refuses June's request to compromise on his construction hours even after she graciously lends him a ladder and brings him pie. His default reaction is to push people away by being unkind, and while his baggage may be understandable, the way he frequently jumps to conclusions about his fellow townspeople makes his redemption an uphill battle. He certainly doesn't seem fully apologetic by the end, marring what could have been a charming and emotionally complex romance. June, though, is an utter delight, and Clay never reaches the point of deserving her.
A middling debut with a heroine who deserves better.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5387-5361-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
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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