Zoey Castile returns to her aptly named Happy Endings series with Hired, in which two people learn that sometimes you have to break a few rules for the sake of finding true love.

Aiden Rios was supposed to be spending a week in New Orleans as an escort to a married woman. Unfortunately, she bailed, and now he’s celebrating his 25th birthday alone. While nursing his disappointment at a hotel bar by drinking one too many hurricanes, he meets Faith Charles. Their attraction is immediate, and one night gives way to yummy brunches, New Orleans sightseeing and so much more. But with Aiden contracted through the week to his married lover and Faith being the daughter of a popular mayoral candidate, their romance is riddled with complications.

Aiden is in the midst of a quarter-life crisis. A bad business decision caused him to jeopardize the male revue show he was part of with his friends, and he isn’t quite sure how to repair those relationships. While his original client, Ginny, hired him for a week of fun in New Orleans, issues with her husband caused her to leave Aiden hanging, an important detail that he keeps from Faith.

Meanwhile, Faith’s anxiety and stress have reached a new high while working on her mother’s campaign. Her relationship with her mom is strained at best, and she feels like every slight action is harshly judged. All she wants is her mother’s love and acceptance, though she fears those things are out of her reach. The way Aiden and Faith find a moment’s respite in one another is incredibly sweet. While they have some sizzling chemistry, they also genuinely like each other. It’s impossible not to smile when they’re together, especially when they’re flirting over a delicious stack of banana chocolate chip pancakes.

Hired is also a love letter to New Orleans. It’s imbued with drool-worthy food descriptions and portrays the city’s fascinating dichotomy between historic locations and humid bayous. Even if you’ve never been, you’ll feel like you can taste the warm beignets coated in powdered sugar and feel the thick heat of the afternoon sun on your neck.

Faith knows that being seen with Aiden could be a problem, both for her mother’s mayoral race and her own fractured familial relationship. Aiden has his own set of rules when it comes to women, knowing that attachments only breed more problems. But the two of them just fit, and despite the fallout from bending and breaking these rules, they’re willing to take a chance to see if it’s all worth it.

With a contemporary romance series that just keeps getting better, Castile is becoming a surefire bet for readers in search of adorable, emotionally fluent romances that will undoubtedly trigger a happy cry or two.

Nothing says romance like a crowded, grimy airport, right? Throw in a winter storm, cascading flight cancellations and snarky, utterly unhelpful desk agents and you’ve got the perfect recipe for, well, maybe not a meet cute, but at the very least, a meet desperate. And desperate is exactly what fashion model Gia Gallo is when her flight—scheduled to take her from snow swept New York to sunny, beachy Florida for the wedding of one of her closest friends—is called off.

Riding (reluctantly) to her rescue is restauranteur Bennett Buchanan, best man at the wedding and also ticketed on the flight that was cancelled. He’s not happy about the flight, or the weather, or Gia in general. (The way she chewed out the guy at the ticket counter made a lousy first impression.) But his personal code, burned into him through hard lessons in his younger years, won’t let him leave her stranded. It starts as a strained compromise—literally “any port in a storm”—when he offers her somewhere to stay for the night. It leads into a tentative partnership when their shifting travel plans result in them renting a car to drive the rest of the way. It develops into respect and appreciation as they get to know each other better and see different sides of each other. And then, through shared meals and shared confidences and plenty of shared intimacies, it blossoms into something more.

The roadmap for the story is pretty straightforward. Hollywood has been making bank for the past century or so on the idea of seemingly mismatched couples finding love on a road trip. But as with any really worthwhile voyage, the destination matters less than the journey along the way. And this journey shows some lovely thoughtfulness and insight in the places where Holiday pauses to reevaluate the characters and dig deeper into what’s made them who they are. I’d have liked the story to go even further—it only skims the surface on bigger issues, like the sexual harassment that’s par for the course in the fashion industry, or the way that toxic privilege encourages spoiled rich kids to become the worst possible versions of themselves. But I understand that at the end of the day, this story has a goal of Happily Ever After to reach, and it can’t linger too long at any of the stops along the way. And since that HEA is reached with warmth, humor, steamy interludes, excellent friendships and really delicious-sounding food, I couldn’t bring myself to mind.

Top Pick in Romance, December 2018

Susan Fox sends an arrow to the heart with Sail Away with Me. Family obligations bring successful musician Julian Blake back to Destiny Island in the Pacific Northwest. He ran from the island as a teen, under the shadow of a terrible secret. But now he must manage his complicated emotions concerning the island in order to return and help his injured dad. Iris Yakimura, the introverted local bookseller, acts as a balm to Julian’s soul. They build a friendship, albeit one that has a limited shelf life, since he’ll be returning to his career and she believes she’s island-bound forever. But they both find hidden strengths—Julian exposes the man who sexually abused him, and Iris faces up to her near-crippling shyness. This is no saccharine Christmas tale, though there’s sweetness to be found in the courageous actions of the characters. The discussion of the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II adds another dimension to this wonderful story of finding love in the midst of hardship and pain. Prepare for tears and smiles, and have tissues at the ready.

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.