An engrossing, soulful story of people working their way toward redemption.
A Jewish family copes with illness, lawsuits, and the spiritual legacy of the Holocaust in Berger’s latest novel in a family saga.
This fourth novel in this series unfolds in 1991 with the Greek American Jewish Covo clan settled in the New York City area and beset with ethical quandaries. Psychiatrist Nicky Covo faces a malpractice lawsuit alleging deliberate neglect of a patient who died by suicide—a charge that Nicky is almost certain is baseless. Meanwhile, his second wife, Helen, doesn’t want to face the fact that her daughter, Sarah, has terminal cancer, and Nicky’s daughter, Kayla, is dealing with schizophrenia, which derailed her career as a concert pianist, while raising her 7-year-old son, Jackie. She starts courting a man in her Hasidic congregation who seems like a straight arrow—until he proposes premarital sex to test their compatibility. Nicky’s son, Max, starts questioning his legal career while pursuing a nasty, thankless case. Nicky, Helen, Kayla, and Jackie also visit Nicky’s sister Kal, who’s now a Greek Orthodox nun known as Sister Theodora at a monastery in Greece, where she and Nicky grew up. Theodora converted after a priest sheltered her from the Nazis and Nicky miraculously survived a grenade explosion during the war. She still wrestles with guilt over her previous, insistent claim that Jackie is the second coming of Jesus, an idea that offended her family. Still, her uncanny warmth and clairvoyance make the Covos turn to her for solace: Helen asks her to pray for Sarah; Kayla seeks help for her composer’s block; Nicky, a professed atheist, confessed infidelity the previous year; and devoutly Jewish Jackie starts seeing visions of the Virgin Mary.
Berger’s yarn presents his characters with moral conundrums large and small, set in the context of deeply held religious traditions. It’s also a rich, subtle study of the varieties of religious devotion, from Talmudic legalism that tempers commandments with practical wisdom to mystical visions that feel rapturous and dangerous and prayerful communion with God. Berger explores all this via complex, flawed characters mired in real-life quagmires. He often writes with a meticulous realism that dissects behavior and motivations with clinical precision, as when Helen attempts to find solace in bourbon: “The surge of alcohol into her throat and esophagus brought about a coughing spell, and a small quantity of bourbon became airborne as droplets in Helen’s kitchen. When the coughing stopped, Helen spilled out the rest of her drink….That’s what grief does to you, she thought. It makes you selfish. It makes you reckless and thoughtless.” However, the prose also takes on a quiet lyricism in moments of plangent reflection: “The times in Kayla’s life when she had most felt prayer encompassing her, although she wouldn’t have called it such at the time, was when she performed. Beethoven, the Appassionata in particular, was nothing but a prayer to Hashem.” The Covos’ struggles are sure to resonate with anyone who’s ever had an uneasy conscience and a hopeful heart. An engrossing, soulful story of people working their way toward redemption.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781685136734
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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