An elegant, slow-burning portrait of quiet heartbreak and enduring love.
Rosenthal’s melancholic romance novel explores love, loss, and the people we can’t let go.
Suzanne Starek is nearing 30 and stuck in emotional and professional limbo. An adjunct instructor of American history in Manhattan, she spends her days grading papers, dodging insecurities, and stoically carrying a torch for her lifelong best friend, Jay Darnell. “If he knew I was dying for more, it could ruin everything,” she confesses. “It might make things different. Weird. Awkward. I could lose him—and that would be even worse than spending the rest of my life being secretly in love with my best friend.” Jay, who lives with his troubled and emotionally volatile mother, Laurinda, is charming, decent, and, as Suzanne notes, “the only man I want to sleep on [my sheets] with me.” Their relationship is complex, shaped by decades of shared history and silent sacrifice. But as old friends re-emerge, lovers circle in and out of the picture, and the memory of Suzanne’s gifted uncle and absent father haunt her, she’s forced to reckon with what it means to stay silent. Rosenthal’s prose is quietly luminous and deeply empathetic. Even everyday exchanges are weighted with unspoken longing: “You should eat,” Jay says gently. “You look very thin.” The book is populated with rich supporting characters, including Suzanne’s no-nonsense nurse mother, her bitter grandfather, Jay’s glamorous, toxic mother, and the enigmatic Tru Warrick, who may or may not be Jay’s latest love interest. The plot unfolds at a meditative pace, emphasizing emotion over event. Still, the narrative is layered with personal and familial drama—tenure-track anxieties, health scares, bitter generational conflict, and unresolved grief. At the beautifully melancholic story’s heart is Suzanne’s aching question: What do we do with the love we can’t express?
An elegant, slow-burning portrait of quiet heartbreak and enduring love.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798990833173
Page Count: 311
Publisher: Tribeca Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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