6 minute read
ROMANCE
georgie, all along
right up their alley. But for those itching for less talk and more action, the book’s many pages of setup become wearing.
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.
GEORGIE, ALL ALONG
Clayborn, Kate Kensington (320 pp.) $16.95 paper | Jan. 24, 2023 978-1-4967-3729-8
A recently unemployed personal assistant returns to her hometown and finds a journal of dreams from her past— as well as a new romance—that helps her write a brighter future. When her screenwriter boss announces her retirement, Georgie Mulcahy suddenly finds herself not only without a job, but also lacking a single, solitary idea about what to do with her life. Road-tripping to her Virginia hometown to help Annabel, her pregnant best friend, settle into a new house is a start, but beyond that, Georgie’s future looks like the wrong kind of blank slate. When the two women uncover a box of memories from high school, Georgie seizes upon the “friend fic” journal they once wrote together, its pages overflowing with unfinished plans and dreams. Maybe looking to the past is exactly what she needs to jump-start her future, and by completing all of the bucket-list items she and Bel never got to do together, she can achieve the fullest version of herself in the process. Georgie’s plans immediately start to go awry, though, when she’s surprised to find another person crashing at her parents’ house while they’re out of town—Levi Fanning, town black sheep and older brother of her high school crush. His reputation for being a perennial screw-up precedes him, but beneath his gruff exterior lies a much softer center. As he offers to help Georgie check off some of her friend fic goals, the continuing proximity between them clues her in to the fact that what she really wants isn’t to retreat into her past but write a future for herself instead, one that unapologetically includes Levi, too. Clayborn’s stories always feel equally specific and universal, written with vulnerability, humor, and empathy, and this latest is no exception. Georgie and Levi each have an incredibly charged presence on the page as the story explores their individual narratives, but their differences allow them to forge an entirely perfect whole.
A modern yet timeless love story.
A LOVE BY DESIGN
Everett, Elizabeth Berkley (352 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jan. 17, 2023 978-0-593-20066-7
This Victorian romance builds a bridge over the seeming gap between heterosexual romantic couplehood and a woman’s professional fulfillment. The third novel in Everett’s Secret Scientists of London series pairs engineer Margaret “Maggie” Gault and George Willis, Earl Grantham, estranged childhood sweethearts. When a widowed Maggie returns to England after her supportive French husband’s death, she expects to strive alone in establishing the first womanowned engineering firm. Despite the support of the other members of Athena’s Retreat, a secret club for women scientists, she expects that an ethical compromise she has made to get a lifechanging commission will soon earn their disapproval. George, the man who abandoned her as a teenager, is an additional concern, though he seems different from the boy she had trusted or the genial ne’er-do-well the aristocracy once thought him to be. Having grieved his well-meant but misguided abandonment of Maggie, he’s hopeful of a reconciliation, but his goal of ruining an opponent of liberal reform puts Maggie’s ambitions at risk. Everett raises the stakes from personal love to political battles, framing individual romance against the backdrop of gender and class struggle. Written with an evenhanded mix of slapstick, emotional confrontations, and scenes of intimacy that include reproductive choices, this novel may be the strongest one of the series yet. Fans of Lisa Kleypas will also appreciate glimpses of the tropes she’s popularized in the Victorian historical romance genre, including “hurt/comfort,” fused with a sequence reminiscent of the scene in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility in which Alan Rickman’s Brandon carries Kate Winslet’s Marianne home.
A second-chance, friends-to-enemies-to-lovers romance that imagines smashing the patriarchy.
THE DUKE GETS EVEN
Shupe, Joanna Avon/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jan. 24, 2023 978-0-06-304507-1
A jilted duke finally finds the heiress he needs but not where he expects. Anyone would feel bad for the Duke of Lockwood. Most broke English aristocrats who sail into New York, looking for an heiress who will trade her fortune to be made a duchess, end up with their pick of eligible debutantes. But by now Lockwood has been connected to and then dumped by not one, not two, but three women. (They all ended up engaged to their love matches instead, but still.) At this point, he can’t help wondering if it’s a coincidence that they’re
all close friends with Miss Nellie Young and if she’s the cause of his misfortune, since they had an amorous midnight encounter by the ocean just before his third engagement fell through. The daughter of a railroad tycoon, her fortune could make her a potential match, but her reputation is checkered, to say the least. Not that she minds—Nellie prefers to be single, free to take lovers when she pleases and to spend her time getting around the Comstock laws to share information about family planning and contraception with other women. As Lockwood begins one last attempt to find a duchess to take home before it’s too late to save his family’s dukedom, somehow he keeps finding his way back to Nellie instead. Their shared appetite for risky intimacy isn’t sated by repeated encounters, and Lockwood realizes that regardless of Nellie’s reputation, she’s the future duchess he needs—but Nellie isn’t willing to give up her freedom. This is a satisfying conclusion to Shupe’s Fifth Avenue Rebels series, especially as no reader could fail to feel sympathy for Lockwood by now. The chemistry between Lockwood and Nellie is sizzling; Shupe has outdone herself again in bringing to life the rough-and-ready attraction between her two main characters. The book is also notable for showing a different side of Manhattan, as Nellie’s mother was an Irish maid and her family in Hell’s Kitchen is central to the story. Historically accurate details, especially surrounding the battle for information about birth control in the 1890s, round out this resonant tale.
A strong finish to a strong-willed Gilded Age series.
A GUIDE TO BEING JUST FRIENDS
Sullivan, Sophie St. Martin’s Griffin (336 pp.) $16.99 paper | Jan. 17, 2023 978-1-2506-2420-8
Can men and women ever be friends? A restaurant owner and a businessman put the immortal question from When Harry Met Sally to the test. After getting dumped by her selfinvolved actor boyfriend, Hailey Sharp throws herself into work. She uses her experience working for food services trucks on film sets to open her own brick-and-mortar salad shop, By the Cup. She’s looking to run a successful business, not fall in love. Enter Wes Jansen. After a botched meet-cute where he thinks she’s the blind date who stood him up, he confides in Hailey that he’s over the dating-app scene. His parents’ acrimonious divorce soured him on love, and he’d much rather focus on the company he owns with his brothers, which has the goal of helping small businesses grow. Hailey agrees with his philosophy, and the two of them decide to be just friends. Of course, as Wes helps Hailey with her business and she joins in on his family celebrations, friendship starts to look a whole lot like falling in love. All of their friends, including Wes’ brothers, can tell they’re perfect for each other, but Wes doesn’t want to damage their friendship—and Hailey doesn’t want to lose herself to another man who can’t commit. But when their attraction to each other becomes too strong to ignore, they’ll have to decide if love is worth being vulnerable. In the third and final installment of her Jansen Brothers series, Sullivan creates warm and likable leads. Hailey is strong and relatable as a woman attempting to restart her life after derailing it for an unworthy man, and Wes, while pricklier, is loyal and supportive of all his friends, especially Hailey. Although their journey to true love encounters quite a few obstacles, it’s still an entertaining trek to discover their happily-ever-after.
