Review: "Secret Nights and Northern Lights" by Megan Oliver

Secret Nights and Northern Lights by Megan Oliver
Published November 2025 via Berkley
★★★

Mona's a writer at her dream employer—but despite dreaming of being a travel writer, she's been stuck on the domestic beat for years. When she's called in to pinch-hit for a feature on Iceland, all that could change...but there's a catch: The assigned photographer is her childhood sweetheart, who abruptly disappeared from her life. She has to work with him—and if she wants that promotion, she has to convince him to take a full-time position at her magazine.

This was one of a handful of books that I read for the "northern lights" part of the title. I do love a good theme, and the idea of a bunch of northern-lights-themed romance novels coming out around the same time was too good to resist. This theme has taken me to Alaska, Iceland, Finland, and now back to Iceland...and no promises (will have to see what my library comes up with), but I may be adding Norway to the mix before this mini book adventure is over.

Now. Plot-wise/Iceland-wise, it was nice that this romp through Iceland differed from that in Meet Me Under the Northern Lights; there, the protagonist has a city base and does some day trips, while here, Mona and Ben are traversing Iceland's Ring Road and stopping to check out various attractions (with an emphasis on waterfalls). It's not Mona's chosen itinerary (see: pinch hitter), and so there's a fair amount of flailing and panicking because she's not an outdoorsy person but needs, for the sake of the article, to do some hiking and so on.

Mona I found a little frustrating. She seems to have very little drive—as far as I can tell, the fact that she's never been given an assignment that would take her abroad means that she's...never been abroad. Her dream trip is to Italy, and even with limited vacation time, that's something she should be able to make happen on her own. Instead, she's grinding quietly away, hoping that her next article about a quilting bee or pickle festival or whatever will be the thing that convinces her boss that she can make it in the big leagues. (Her workplace, incidentally, is big-time toxic, with a boss who gives cigar-chomping sleaze vibes. The international/travel writers get all of the perks, while those on assignment locally get none of the perks. It takes Mona a long time to realize that this is unfair—it might be accurate to say that she has a bit of an inferiority complex—but even then it never really occurs to her to try something on her own terms.) I guess it's this: I know people who are afraid of going outside their comfort zone but do it anyway because they find it rewarding, and even if Mona didn't start in that place I wish she'd made more of an effort to get there.

Romance-wise, a lot hinges on Mona being unwilling to have an open conversation with Ben until late in the book. I didn't keep track, unfortunately, but the number of times Ben says "can we talk about what happened when we were teenagers" and Mona shuts him down...well, I wouldn't mind having a dime for each of those occurrences. I wouldn't be rich, but I could buy a cup of coffee! It's a positive for Ben (yes please to heroes who try to communicate) but not something that endears me to Mona. It's there for the sake of conflict, of course, but books in which the only real conflict between characters is that they refuse to have an honest conversation will always feel a little thin to me.

At some point I'll have to put all these books in a lineup together and ask myself where I'd most like to go based on these books...and while I don't necessarily want to be besties with Mona, I could get behind a Ring Road trip with a lot of hiking thrown in.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.