One of romance’s brightest stars, Rebekah Weatherspoon is known for her sweet and steamy stories. With If the Boot Fits, the second in the Cowboys of California series, she  burnishes that reputation further, delivering a thoroughly modern Cinderella story about an aspiring screenwriter hesitantly falling for a sexy, celebrity, cinnamon-roll-sweet hero with swagger.

Weatherspoon deftly translates the classic rags to riches fairy tale's core elements into a 21st-century context. As an overworked and underappreciated assistant, Amanda McQueen is the perfect contemporary equivalent of a put-upon poor relation—an invisible underling with proximity to the glitter and glam of Hollywood, but no meaningful access. Cinderella’s stepsisters and wicked stepmother have merged into a single figure, the pampered and punitive starlet Dru Anastasia, who uses Amanda as an emotional sounding board but provides little pay and no respect in return. Sam Pleasant, a former cowboy and scion of a venerable Black Hollywood family, makes an excellent 21st-century prince, and the Vanity Fair Oscar party easily stands in for a royal ball.

While it’s great fun to see this fantasy transformed, the relationship between Amanda and Sam is the beating heart of the story, and the way their connection develops is brand new. After all, Cinderella and Prince Charming didn’t hook up after the ball. Also new is Amanda’s irreverence and incredulity the morning after, when she wakes up in a hotel room and can’t help but think, “The night before must have been a dream.” Her mind boggles as she contemplates the series of events that led from the Vanity Fair Oscar party to an A-list after-party, and, eventually, to Sam’s bed. Her conclusion: “There was no way. . . . There was absolutely no freaking way she’d run into Samuel Pleasant at both events, and surely you’d be joking if you told her that sometime in the night she and Sam had completely hit it off.”

This is Amanda’s voice throughout— lively, skeptical and incredibly relatable. Thinking this can’t happen or it’s just one night is incredibly freeing, and Amanda could use some freedom from her grind. One moment, she and Sam are having fun, with no names exchanged and no expectations. The next, he’s asking for her name in the middle of her “enthusiastic rendition of the cha-cha slide.” But she’s still skeptical, so she plays it cool and keeps it moving. “Sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m dancing,” is Amanda’s reply, and she assumes that’s that.

It’s a joy to read those initial scenes and watch Sam and Amanda's warring instincts battle it out. Weatherspoon creates vivid, specific characters and gives them wonderful interior lives and excellent banter. Their romance begins with that one-night stand, and the initial spark grows through a shared sense of fun, common values and tastes. Sam recognizes something in Amanda, and he invites her into his home and his inner circle without hesitation.

It should be obvious that they belong together, and yet, despite the chemistry and all their commonalities, according to the conventions of Hollywood, romantic fiction and fairy tales, Sam and Amanda qualify as an “unlikely couple,” defying major societal norms. Sam comes from a wealthy family and has just won an Academy Award, whereas Amanda is “a D-list actress’s lowly assistant” who is struggling to find her footing in the entertainment industry and to just make her rent each month. And even though they’re both African American, Amanda is a beautiful, dark-skinned, plus-size Black woman. In a culture that still holds fast to narrow definitions of what constitutes beauty, this reduces her status and eligibility. To be clear, Amanda has confidence in her talent and her looks. She’s also very aware, however, and sometimes overtly reminded, that successful Black women in Hollywood don’t often look like her. The contrast to her boss, Dru, a thin, light-skinned biracial woman, is especially prominent.

It’s not often that distinctions like this are directly challenged on the page in traditionally published romance, and Weatherspoon handles it all with grace, allowing discomfiting truths and subtle social critique to emerge organically from the events of the story. Conflicts around class, color and size are just part of this romance, however. It’s really about character and family. Though If the Boot Fits places Amanda in a professional context in which she cannot fully escape toxic standards, much of the central relationship develops on Sam’s ranch, a hundred miles away from the image-obsessed center of the storm. As a result, their love story never feels didactic and the romance never gets weighed down. There’s warmth and lightness throughout this very contemporary, yet ultimately classically romantic retelling—Amanda thrives on the support from her own friends and family, and Sam’s family may be Black Hollywood royalty, but they're also grounded, kind human beings, who embrace her and remind her of home. Readers who want romance to explore some of the real issues that women like Amanda face and see her beautifully celebrated and cherished will absolutely adore this book.

A series of unfortunate events lead to a meet-disaster in Julia London’s affecting and ebullient romantic comedy You Lucky Dog. Austinites Carly and Max have very little in common apart from very good taste in basset hounds and bad luck with dog walkers. Carly is a newly independent (and recently unemployed) public relations consultant catering to clients in the fashion and art world. Max is a socially awkward neuroscientist fixated on achieving tenure at the University of Texas.

With such disparate lives, the stars must align just right for these two to get together. When dog-walker/drug dealer/agent of chaos Brant gets caught up in a police sting operation, he enlists a friend to return his canine charges to their rightful homes. This friend, however, has trouble differentiating between Max’s perennially perky Hazel and Carly’s chronically depressed Baxter, and returns each dog to the wrong human. Even worse, with Brant out of the picture, Max has no one to dogsit while he takes his brother to a long-promised weekend in Chicago.

After bonding with Hazel, Carly is more than qualified to pinch hit in an emergency, and by the time Max returns, Hazel and Baxter are bonded, and Baxter’s outlook has improved. From there, it’s only natural that the four keep in touch. Chaperoned doggy dates allow humans and hounds to bond, and attraction evolves into romance. And yet, the course of true love never did run smooth. Otherwise, You Lucky Dog wouldn’t be the entertaining comedy of errors it is. Conflicting career paths and curious coincidences create roadblocks for Max and Carly without ever veering into angst.

London’s loose and limber comedic writing amplifies Max and Carly’s appeal, filling each voice with a unique perspective and personality. Max is a caring man who “was worried about his Very Good dog, a fourteen on a scale of ten on any damn day. He hoped whoever had ended up with her was taking good care of her.” As a scientist, he thinks about attraction in biological terms: “he felt a bit of a flutter in his chest, a telltale sign that the hormone norepinephrine was coming together with the rest of him to brighten his day.” Carly’s free-associative brain, meanwhile, overflows with pop culture references. She lives in a carriage house previously “occupied by a coven of witches or hippies or maybe even Matthew McConaughey—it depends on who you talk to.” The beauty is that the differences don’t just contrast; they complement, making Max and Carly’s love story a delight.

Elle Wright kicks off her new Pure Talent series with a bang in The Way You Tempt Me. This friends-to-lovers contemporary romance is sexy, addictive and deliciously dramatic.

Xavier Starks is the heir apparent for the new sports division of his family’s talent agency, Pure Talent. As a former child star, Xavier is no stranger to life in the limelight. In fact, the reformed playboy seems perfectly suited to deal with athletes who, collectively, are a dramatic bunch. But right as Xavier is about to propose to his Hollywood starlet girlfriend, she dumps him. And while heartbreak is no more severe for famous people, the situation is amplified because the world is watching, and the internet is forever.

Also watching is his father, Jax, and his childhood friend Zara Reid, a high-powered sports agent. When Zara returns to Atlanta after her own professional disappointment, Jax is delighted to bring her on board at Pure Talent. Zara never imagined she’d be competing with (and outplaying) Xavier for the same position, and the stakes have never been higher. Because sometimes when you’re not paying attention, you miss the good things that are right in front of you. Late nights, stressful deadlines and a lifetime of camaraderie come to a head as the two try to win the job . . . and maybe each other.

Workplace romances, both in the real world and in fiction, have the potential to cause maximum damage to those involved in a relationship. Aside from the perennial question of consent, Wright explores a quagmire of supervisors and subordinates, breaking up and remaining professional, and nepotism. But as The Way You Tempt Me realistically acknowledges, when you work 24/7 at a high-pressure career, where else will you find a partner?

Wright has crafted a compelling world of strong, complex characters. Our fearless Zara is no pushover in a man’s world. And on the flipside, Xavier is not steeped in the toxic masculinity that could so easily define his character in the competitive arena of athletes and sports agents. This is a fantastic start to a new series by one of romance’s rising stars.