A masterful, original take on a beloved fairy tale is sure to please romance readers.
A gender-swapped “Cinderella” about an heiress and a custodian in 1832 London.
After her father’s untimely death, Isabella Lira must marry to secure her family’s business and standing. Her father sat on the London Commission of Delegates, an organization that works with the Crown for the safety and security of the entire Jewish community in England, while also co-owning a business with the powerful Berab brothers. The three brothers each offer to marry her, hoping to secure total control of the shared business. Isabella wants to preserve her own influence in the company, so she hatches a plan to find another suitor—one outside the sphere of the Berab family. She's going to throw three festivals in three weeks, between the holidays of Passover and Lag b’Omer, and she enlists the help of Aaron Ellenberg, an unlikely ally. Aaron exists in a strange liminal space in the community: He’s a kindhearted and gentle man who has never successfully found a job or home of his own. The community supports him by providing work as a custodian in the synagogue. He has become expert at observing everyone and everything while remaining invisible in the background. Isabella asks him to spy on prospective suitors at her parties to help her find one who won't try to control her—a man with a secret that Isabella could hold over him. In return, she offers Aaron 200 pounds, enough money for him to have a home and family, which had always seemed like an impossible dream. Isabella and Aaron should have nothing in common, but while working together they learn to respect and love each other despite their differences in status and the many obstacles in their way. It’s an engaging and sexy romance, almost old-school in its complexity, complete with genuine conflict, delicious tension, and dense, meaty subplots.
A masterful, original take on a beloved fairy tale is sure to please romance readers.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781538722541
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lively, quirky gothic romance for readers who like ghost stories as much as love stories.
The fourth wife of a dreadful lord finds intrigue in the Scottish Highlands.
Nobody wants Genevieve to marry Lord Burnsby, “England’s most boring peer.” He’s almost 70 and has three dead (possibly murdered) wives in his past. But Evie isn’t looking for love; she’s just looking for some stability at her “august age” of 25 and a dowry for her younger sister. Through their hasty wedding and long trek north to his estate in Scotland, she’s determined to make the best of it—until they arrive at the dreary, cold abbey where he resides. Lord Burnsby, it turns out, has been keeping his mistress there, and generally terrorizing everyone around him. Evie also meets the handsome Sir Godric Everley, a lawyer friend of Burnsby’s heir, whom she initially counts as another villain but soon discovers is surprisingly interesting and kind. Faced with a situation for which her years of perfect behavior have left her utterly unprepared, Evie realizes she will have to take charge even if it means acting unladylike. And though her growing confidence brings many good things to the abbey and its residents, it also brings danger, as Evie and Godric begin to uncover decades of secrets. This historical romance is technically a Regency, but more than anything, it’s a gothic tale. Told in the first person from Evie’s perspective, the book stands apart thanks to her dry, knowing voice combined with the haunting yet whimsical nature of Burnsby’s abbey. It’s a moody ghost story, full of plot twists, but it’s also the tale of a strong heroine with a quick wit and a piglet for a pet. There’s plenty of chemistry as Evie’s relationship slowly develops with Godric, but Evie’s personal development is almost as compelling. Though the story takes some time to find its feet, this book is likely to be enjoyed by James’ fans, as it’s one of her best in years.
A lively, quirky gothic romance for readers who like ghost stories as much as love stories.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9781668200056
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
Misogyny, classism, colorism, hypocrisy: begone! A fierce, fabulous, and very funny truth-teller cometh to take you down.
A rollicking satire of Black megachurch culture featuring an irresistible fireball of a protagonist.
Philyaw follows a much-lauded story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (2020), with a debut novel that reads as if she’s channeling the authentic voice of the biggest, baddest, most profoundly un-churchy church lady of all time. Married to Pastor David Freeman, Scharisse Freeman is the first lady of the 25,000-member Hope in Christ Baptist Church, a spiritual and business empire headquartered in Belleton, Georgia. We meet her backstage at the First Lady USA Pageant, an event she has been shut out of for years due to her rough background, the daughter of a teen mother who died young with no connection to the hierarchy of church lineage, a “rags-to-Rolex story,” as she puts it. And though a first lady is meant to epitomize the model of feminine subservience described in Proverbs 31, a Bible passage included at the front for the uninitiated, Scharisse could not be less interested in getting up while it is still night and preparing food or selecting wool and working with eager hands. She is a self-described “brand whore” and fashion diva who sees her wifely duty as keeping Pastor David busy in the bedroom and attending to the needs of her moody, hypercritical teenage daughter, Gabrielle. Yet this iconoclasm is belied by a burning need to win the approval of the holier-than-thou first lady clique, a project made even more difficult by secrets and scandals that erupt during the year leading up to the pageant. Scharisse is an irresistible character, more Prometheus than Proverbs 31, and readers will be rooting for her every step of the way, even as some of those steps are clearly faux pas. Philyaw’s vibrantly voicey tale will appeal to both insiders and outsiders of the culture it describes, a Crazy Rich Asians–style visit to a rarefied realm, but with much more hot sex. At 40, Scharisse is a woman deeply in touch with her physical needs. By the time she takes the stage at First Lady USA, she is also in touch with her soul.
Misogyny, classism, colorism, hypocrisy: begone! A fierce, fabulous, and very funny truth-teller cometh to take you down.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780063383074
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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