Richly layered characters give this romance broad crossover appeal.
A woman newly arrived in Harlem falls in love with a man out of time.
Ricki Wilde has never fit in with her buttoned-up, high-society Atlanta family—she’s always been a rule-breaker who values creativity over comportment. Her family owns a funeral home business, but she dreams of opening a flower shop. The financial and logistical impediments seem insurmountable, though, until she meets Della Bennett, a 96-year-old woman who’s come into one of the Wilde Funeral Homes to arrange a homegoing for her husband. It turns out that she owns a brownstone in Harlem, and she offers to let Ricki rent out the bottom floor, which has room for both a shop and a small living space. Even with a fairy godmother, opening a new business is hard; she struggles to keep it afloat but draws media attention by placing her dazzling, inventive flower arrangements at sites made famous during the Harlem Renaissance. One February evening, she meets a mysterious man in a neighborhood garden full of night-blooming jasmine, just one of many hints that something magical is bringing them together. Ezra Walker is a traveling musician with courtly manners and an unbelievable secret. The book slowly eases into Ricki and Ezra’s love story, with a secondary timeline set during the Harlem Renaissance providing hints about Ezra’s tragic past. He knows he has no future with Ricki and tries to avoid her, but they’re drawn together like magnets. It’s a beautiful romance, tackling big ideas about the burden of family, the weight of time, and the gift of love. But for a novel with such a careful, meticulous unspooling of plot and characters, the ending is rushed, with the strangely passive lovers surrendering to the same forces of fate and time that initially brought them together.
Richly layered characters give this romance broad crossover appeal.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781538726709
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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