A vibrant celebration of identity and the push-pull between heritage and autonomy.
Three sisters coming of age in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community navigate tradition, love, and self-discovery within the constraints of a tightknit religious world.
The novel opens as Fortune, the middle sister in the Cohen family, thinks about her upcoming wedding to Saul Dweck, a nice boy from the neighborhood who meets every expectation but stirs little passion. Fortune has been working as an office assistant at her father’s company, biding her time until marriage, as is expected. Her older sister, Nina, spends her days helping their mother with her thriving catering company. At 26, Nina’s already considered a spinster, yet she’s just beginning to think about what she might want from life. When a job at a record label falls in her lap, she grabs it, eager to taste independence beyond their insular community. Meanwhile, the youngest sister, Lucy, a senior at a local Jewish high school, has recently caught the eye of a highly eligible 30-year-old doctor named David, and nobody seems to mind their glaring age difference. As Nina and Lucy begin to challenge what’s expected of them, Fortune begins to wonder whether she has the courage to upend her safe, preordained future with Saul for something less certain, but perhaps far more satisfying. Told in alternating first-person narratives from each of the three sisters, the novel offers many evocative, chaotic, slice-of-life moments. From the savory smells of traditional dishes, to the sharp-edged banter among mother and daughters, the story is chock-full of vivid details and prose that brings the rhythms of this Syrian-American Jewish family to life. The relationship between Lucy and David, and the unequal power dynamic between this 18-year-old high schooler and a much older man, raises concerns that warranted greater attention, leaving a gap in an otherwise thoughtful portrayal of gender and tradition. Even so, this plot-driven novel deftly examines weighty themes like generational pressure, sisterhood, and quiet rebellion, creating an intimate, tender, and insightful portrait of women carving space for themselves in a world that offers them little room to breathe.
A vibrant celebration of identity and the push-pull between heritage and autonomy.Pub Date: July 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780593734544
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.
Scottoline’s latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction.
Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia’s grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she’s now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again doesn’t comfort her, but it does provide distraction—especially since she’s never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she’s been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who’ve been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia’s DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia’s clothing and personal items on her orders, so there’s nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia’s decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage.
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781538769997
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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