Sunny Side Up by Katie Sturino

 

Sunny Greene at first glance, has it all. Recently divorced, her PR firm is wildly successful even though she’s only 35, she lives in her dream neighborhood of Chelsea in NYC, and she has two devoted rescue dogs. And since her divorce, where all her ex’s friends stayed on his side of the table, she’s met two other divorcees as devoted to the good life as she is.

But Sunny isn’t finished with men! On the contrary, she signs up for all the dating apps and is determined to find a plus-one for her brother’s wedding in six months.

Before that, her new friends convince her to join them in the Bahamas for a “divorcation” where they will lie on the beach and drink fruity drinks and relax.

Which send Sunny to Bergdorf’s to find a new swimsuit. But Sunny is 5’11 and 275 pounds and…

You get the picture. Rather than depression, Sunny chooses change, and not in the form of a diet. She will provide swimsuits that are stylish and comfortable for women her size! Sunny’s dating escapades, her business acumen and the ticking time clock to the wedding make for a fast paced and energetic read, coupled with plenty of sensitivity and emotion.

Sunny Side Up was released on June 24, 2025, by Celadon books. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy!

The Love Fix by Jill Shalvis

Lexi Clark’s life hasn’t been easy, but with despite all the setbacks, she’s carved a place for herself in New Yorks fine object appraisal business. She loves her boss, professionally and personally. When valuable objects go missing though, her firm, and the boss, throw her under the bus without evidence. She’s summarily fired.

 

At the same time, her stepsister in Sunrise Cove, an idyllic Lake Tahoe community, need her to come home to deal with the remains of their mother’s estate. Sunrise Cove is the site of the neglect and abuse that Lexi underwent as a child. Her “nemesis,” has moved in next door to help his elderly grandfather, and Lexi realizes just how much unfinished business she has.

Beautiful setting, charming and complicated characters and oh so satisfying HEA’s are Shalvis’ many lovely books, and they don’t disappoint in The Love Fix, which was released June 24, 2025, by Avon and Harper Voyager. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced readers copy.

An Irish Summer by Alexandra Paige

 

Chelsea has the perfect life. She loves her hometown, Boston, where her best friend and family are. She loves her job as event coordinator for a charming Bread and Breakfast known as O’Shea’s, her first job out of college. She loves the subsidized apartment she gets as part of her job. She looks forward to the future, where she imagines herself buying the O’Shea’s out.

Until the day they tell her they’ve sold, and she has one month to vacate.

Chelsea feels betrayed, and when she can’t find another job quickly, her choices, to move back home with her parents, or to accept the O’Shea’s offer of a summer at their sister hostel in Galway, Ireland. It’s the last thing Chelsea wants, other than moving back home.

The book then takes the reader on a fabulous adventure in beautiful Ireland, along with lovely people and a gorgeous tour guide!  It’s a perfect summer read for those of us who love to get to know new places in the world. An Irish Summer will be released July 1, 2025. Thanks to Avon and Harper Voyager and NetGalley for the early release copy.

All the Men I've Loved Again by Christine Pride

Cora Belle arrives at college almost like a new hatchling. Having attended an excellent high school, where she was the only black girl, and growing up the cherished daughter of her charming professor dad, Cora is ready for life to begin. With very few glitches, she meets her roommates/sisters for life, as well as the man of her dreams right away.

But all fairy tales have problems, and Cora and the dream man hit a major snag, her beloved father is rushed to the hospital, and while trying to recover from all that, she meets HIM. The rest of the book focuses on these major relationships: the roommates, the first and second loves, and the father/daughter evolution. Spanning her 20s and 30s lets Cora learn and grow and finally decide what is important to her. More a coming into herself than coming of age, Cora has a lot of hard work to do.

The only problem I had with the book was the imbalance of material with the two love interests. Lincoln started out as the rags to riches perfect man, then fell into cliché. Aaron was more interesting, artistic as opposed to Lincolns need to succeed, and each was perfect for Cora in their own time. But the time spent on the two in the novel was about 80% Lincoln, 20% Aaron. It worked though.

 

Christine Pride captures the dilemma of a young woman struggling to please herself instead of just a man, to follow a career she loves instead of what is expected and to care for the family she’s pieced together with love.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria for the advanced copy. All The Men I’ve Loved Again releases on July 8, 2025.

Under the Stars by Beatriz Williams

 

Told from the voices of three women over nearly a three-hundred-year period, Under the Stars is the story of Winthrop Island, where shipwrecks are the legacy and where the rich and famous retreat for summers, or more, to recover from their hectic lives.

Peppered with excerpts from accounts of the sinking of the Steamship Atlantic in 1846, this story is a story of recovery. Audrey Fisher has been summoned to her famous actress mother’s companion as she dries out enough to act in an important, to her, role. She’s an alcoholic, and Audrey is her only child, and their relationship is as rocky as the New England coast. She’s also a professional chef whose husband has betrayed her professionally and personally.

Audrey merely has to survive on the island where she was born, and then she can deliver her mother to Hollywood, and get on with her life.

Only, there are complications. People who turn up dead. Beloved, estranged, father’s whose dive bar is in dire need of fresh life. And then there are the men.

It’s a wonderful, can’t put down, read, perfect for summer reading on the Cape or any other body of water you choose. You are going to want to swim with these characters!

Under the Stars will be released July 29 by Random House Publishing Group/Ballantine. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a great kick off for Summer 2025.

The Sandy Page Bookshop by Hannah McKinnon

 

Leah Powell has it all…a great job in publishing, a wealthy fiancé and a Victorian Brownstone in the Back Bay. But when her passion project she’s devoted her professional career to turns out to be stolen, she loses her job. Then the fiancé drops the bomb, and if that wasn’t enough, her sister, still out on Cape Cod, a year rounder, is in a near fatal accident.

So, Leah leaves Boston to move back in with her father. There are so many wonderful relationships developed in this book that I wouldn’t be doing justice to single out any particular one. Yes, it’s a romance novel, with many of the expected tropes, but it is also a complicated look at starting over mid-career and reclaiming a meaningful past.

The Sandy Page Bookshop will be released on July 22, 2025, by Atria/Emily Bestler books. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this wonderful book early!

Universality by Natasha Brown

 

This was an interesting novel, told from multiple viewpoints and different locations, primarily concerning a Pandemic era rave at a farm in West Yorkshire. As these things do, the party got out of control, a gold bar bludgeoning and the disappearance of the gold afterward, in the hands of a thirty-year-old man whose spend lockdown caretaking the farm. The author tells us early in the book that the missing gold bar is a connecting node—between an amoral banker, an iconoclastic columnist and a radical anarchist movement.

She spends the rest of the book illustrating that statement, creatively mixing the desire for wealth with the need to survive professionally in a time when no one knew what the next day would bring. Brown is a gifted writer. Like many readers, I’m a bit weary of the pandemic, having lived through it not only personally, but through the words of many authors. I get that, but I think this would have landed better with me had I had a few more years distance.

Universality was released on March 4, 2025, by Random House. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy.

Saltwater by Katy Hays

A thriller as twisty as the mountain roads of Capri, where it is set, Saltwater is a multi-point of view novel exercising the trope of the dysfunctional rich, selfish, patriarchal family. Helen’s mother died on the island when she was only three, and the ultra-private family barely mentions her name. The family is sacred, and anything that would sully the name is verboten.

 

Further, Helen is not allowed to intermingle with the underlings, basically anyone outside the family. In her effort, at thirty-two, to break free from the bonds her father and uncle impose, Helen hatches a plan. The disappearance of her father’s assistant, Helen’s friend, in a fashion remarkably similar to Sarah, Helen’s mother’s disappearance, starts the whole thing unraveling.

This isn’t a particularly deep book. Many of the characters are cardboard cutouts relying on our images of rich, cruel people, and we want a character to root for. Helen should be it, but sadly, she’s inherited the greed gene.

The book would be fun to read on a cruise, beach or especially on a trip to Capri. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for the advanced readers copy. Saltwater was released March 25, 2025.

The Griffin Sisters Greates Hits by Jennifer Weiner

 

Weiner has given us another complicated, sensitive novel of a family, blessed with tremendous talent that they don’t seem to know how to use or control.  Zoe, a beautiful ambitious teenager wants to be a rockstar.  Her sister, Cassie, is a neurodivergent girl with none of Zoe’s good looks, but the talent of a prodigy. Together they form The Griffin Sisters and enjoy short lived but amazing success—until the tragedy.

Years later, Zoe’s daughter Cherry, who’s inherited her mother’s looks and her aunt’s talent needs to discover what happened, while trying to find her own way in the world of Rock and Roll. Told from multiple viewpoints, this is a beautiful work with characters we come to appreciate, if not love. 

The Griffin Sisters Greatest hits will be released on May 8, 2025 by Harper Collins. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced readers copy.

Twist by Colum McCann

 

Lyrical prose and storytelling must be in the water in Ireland, and Colum McCann is one of their beloved authors. In his latest novel, Twist, McCann explores the depths of the sea as well as of human emotion. Written in the voice of struggling writer Robert Fenning, it examines the lives of two very different men, and the relationship that develops between them. John Conway is the captain of a ship whose mission is to repair the underwater cable that connects the world to the internet. Fenning is assigned to write an article about the break and repair. Conway is not only the captain of the ship and expert at locating the broken cable and repair, he’s also one of the best free divers in the world. His life fascinates Fenni ng to the point of obsession.

The story will satisfy the most demanding of mystery/thriller readers but quench the thirst for beautiful language for literary readers as well. My favorite parts were the descriptions of the sea and Africa and the many reflections on time. Twist was released on March 25, 2025, by Hyperion Random House. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC of this beautiful novel.

Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall

 

Set in the bucolic farms of rural England, the story of Beth, her lovely husband Frank, and their small family seem like the cast of a fairy tale. But despite their happiness, the peace is breached first by a gunshot, and then by the re-appearance of Beth’s first love.

As a romantic, I can’t decide who I should root for, the man who was forced to leave Beth, or the one who was always on her side, despite the circumstances. The setting is the perfect background for this heartbreaking story, and I promise, it will not just be the country that is broken, but your own heart, too.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this lovely ARC. It was published March 4, 2025, and should not be missed!

The Lost Passenger by Frances Quin

Elinor is the beloved daughter of the highly successful King of the Cotton Mills in England, and she often spends her days with classic Austen novels, or helping her father with his business. Then she meets an Earl who sweeps her off her feet, and quickly marries her. Only after the wedding does she realize that the life of an aristocrat includes none of the things that are important to her.

Then her father surprises her and her new husband and their son with tickets for the maiden voyage of the Titanic!  Another fairy tale for Elinor, but this one ends with heartache. How she and her young son survive not only the icy waters, but their arrival in New York with nothing, and how she decides not even to keep their names is a wonderful story of survival and the things that made New York in the early 1900s wonderful. I won’t spoil the book for you, but there is ample history and plot to keep even the most critical reader engaged! 

The Lost Passenger will be released on February 25, 2025. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy.

The Love Haters by Katherine Center

            Katherine Center never disappoints her readers. We know to expect interesting characters, a plot that isn’t simple, humor and kindness. The Love Haters is no exception.

 

Katie is a creative journalist specializing in videography, whose job is threatened by a downsizing organization and AI. Hutch is a Coast Guard rescue swimmer who’s made headlines for a daring rescue of a celebrity dog. He also happens to be just the right amount of gorgeous, and private.

Katie has one chance to save her career, by getting Hutch to agree to an extensive video interview. The story of how the two negotiate the assignment, which includes a duplicitous brother, a charming Aunt and her crew, and the true star of the story, George Bailey, a rescued Great Dane.

Another delightful, hopeful story by Katherine Center. Not to be missed.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, St. Martin’s Publishing Group for the advance copy. The Love Haters will be released May 20, 2025.

 

 

 

Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld.

 

I admit that when I began this book, I didn’t realize it was a collection of short stories, While I’m a fan of Sittenfeld’s writing, I struggled with the stories, The center mostly around the romantic relationships of the respective narrators, as well as the financial and professional lives they choose. The writing is lovely, and my sense is that any one of these stories would make a good novel, but often I felt like I’d been left hanging, and that’s not how I like to read. Of the collection, I found Lost But Not Forgotten to be the most satisfying, but that’s probably because I got to see more of the character’s full arc, Other’s may love the opportunity to read in smaller bites!

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the review copy, Publication is scheduled for February 25,2025.

The Snowbirds by Christina Clancy

 

Kim and Grant are educated, midwestern professionals who are quintessential empty nesters. When given the opportunity to winter in Palm Springs, they have a chance to make different choices, and The Snowbirds is the story of how they make the decisions that will carry them into their third act.

Sounds simple? Not when you learn that Kim and Grant never actually married, that they have lived in separate cities for thirty years, and that they both have exes with whom there are complicating relationships. And then Grant gets lost on the mountain…no spoiler here because the book is framed by this mishap. The book is primarily told in first person from Kim’s point of view until later in the book when we are given Grant’s journal in pieces. The characters are well drawn and fun, and the story moves in a back-and-forth manner, juxtaposing the current crisis to past ones. Some of those flashbacks get tedious (you will get tired of hearing (or not hearing) about the ex-wife,) and there are so many characters, past and present, that at times it is hard to keep track of them. Overall, it’s an enjoyable read that addresses the issues of long-term relationships in an honest and humorous way.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s press for the advance copy. The Snowbirds will be released on February 4, 2025.

Cleavage: Men, Women and the Space Between Us by Jennifer Finney Boylan

            Jennifer Boylan is an expert on the effects of gender on all parts of life. She spent her first forty years as male, and the past 25 as her authentic self, female. Having written four other books dealing with her transgender journey, Cleavage addresses the frightening situations people who’d begun to relax into their authentic selves, that 2025 and the politics of the USA present.

 

            I first encountered Jennifer Boylan’s writing with the book she co-authored with Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey, so wasn’t surprised at the warmth, compassion and humor exhibited in Cleavage. Her intelligence and positive experiences lend authenticity when she speaks with a kindness that isn’t often represented in connection with what is presented about trans people. We don’t suffer through militance, violence or even voyeurism that so often dominates the discussion of transgender rights in the news is present here. Instead, a fact based, friendly accounting of the difficulties and benefits Jennifer has faced is presented.

Jennifer was granted that basic human right of having people who love her support her along her journey, and this book presents that love and acceptance to anyone reading it. It is the kind of book that makes you want to sit down with the author and tell stories. Cleavage does one thing very well… normalizing this segment of our population in a way that is not threatening and allowing the positive contributions of people who are different than we are, to be recognized, valued, and appreciated.

As a bonus, the book had some great writing advice! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Celadon Books, for the opportunity to read Cleavage in advance. The release date is February 4, 2025.

Three Days In June by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler is a beloved author, consistent in the quality and readability of her work. Somehow her characters always touch a spot in the reader that we can relate to, even if we are vastly different. I think of this as Tyler’s great talent at finding universal emotion.

 

The story isn’t complicated. Gail Baines’ daughter is getting married in three days. Gail struggles with her career, her relationship with her daughter and her ex-husband. While the relationships are amiable, but Gail’s feelings are on edge. Her boss finds Gail’s people skills lacking, despite having depended on her for many years. Her daughter, trying hard to impress her soon to be in-laws, fails to include Gail in her pre-wedding activities. And then her ex-husband, Max shows up to attend the wedding, needing a place to stay. Gail reluctantly agrees, and then Max produces a cat!

The book is simultaneously heartwarming and awkward, endearing and full of suspense. It is, delightfully, another Anne Tyler achievement of excellence.

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, for the review copy. Three Days in June will be released February 11, 2025

How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? By Anna Montague

As Magda approaches her seventieth birthday, she finds she has a lot left to figure out about who she is. Her lifelong best friend, Sara, the charming, creative art curator, who has brought many of Magda’s happiest moments to her life, including planning her birthday parties, has died. Sara’s husband, eager to move on with a new relationship, seeks Magda’s help sorting her possessions, and ultimately, taking possession of the urn containing Sara’s ashes. When Magda decides to take the road trip Sara had planned for Magda’s 70^th, she takes the urn along, which anthropomorphs into Sara in Magda’s mind.

Magda has grieving to do, not only for the person Sara was to her, but what she represented. Discovering that Magda can continue to live, in more open and fulfilling ways, is the journey she takes us on.

Montagues writing is clean and many times lovely, but the telling of this story, primarily through Magda’s mental musings, drags. I struggled to finish, but was glad I did, as I really wanted to know that, as Magda insists at the opening of the book, she is fine.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Ecco/HarperCollins for the review copy. How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund was published October 22, 2024.