Restore Me

Restore Me is the first book in J.L. Seegars's New Haven series, published by Sourcebooks in January 2026 — a run of interconnected contemporary romance standalones built around second chances and Black heroines who get their happily ever afters.

Sloane Kent has been a widow for four years. Dominic Alexander was her husband's best friend, and for twelve years he has been arrogant, dismissive and apparently determined to look straight through her. Then one drunken night and an unexpected act of heroism change the register between them, and Dominic starts treating her with a warmth that unsettles everything Sloane promised herself after her husband died. Told from both their points of view, the novel lets Dominic reveal what the antagonism was actually covering: not dislike, but a feeling he has spent a decade refusing to name because his best friend's wife was the one person he could never want.

The result is a forbidden, slow-simmering romance that keeps grief and desire in the same room. Reviewers single out the pull between the two leads and the emotional weight of Sloane's healing; at 576 pages it is a long, explicit read that takes its time with the relationship rather than the plot.