Good for a few laughs but ultimately unsatisfying.
When a 28-year-old aspiring screenwriter gets dropped by her agent, she tries to pitch her script to her former University of Texas professor Matthew McConaughey.
In the eyes of her strict Indian parents, Isha Patel is little more than a disappointment. She’s 28, living at home, and a two-time college dropout who was majoring in, gasp, theater and film. Isha manages to make ends meet on a meager salary from her freelance communications job, but her dream is to become a famous screenwriter. She tells herself that her latest script, The Avenged, is her “ ‘lucky eight,’ because it turned out that ‘lucky seven’ wasn’t a thing after all and we were way past ‘third time’s a charm.’ ” Isha knows that she'll succeed soon enough—how can she not when she was mentored by UT royalty Matthew McConaughey in a screenwriting class, even if that was years ago already? While waiting for her agent to book meetings with producers, she spends most of her time hanging out with her younger cousin Rohan. He introduces Isha to a new pub run by two brothers who just happen to have a connection to McConaughey. Isha swoons over Tarik, one of the brothers whom she immediately nicknames Thirst-Trap. Wildly hungover from a night of sampling Tarik’s fruity drinks, she bombs a last-minute pitch meeting her agent set up for her. Her agent promptly drops her, and a second, more self-pitying trip to the pub with Rohan leads to bar fighting, dumpster diving, and breaking into the grounds of McConaughey’s Texas estate…just in case he’d like to read a few pages of her script. Patel’s latest rom-com is full of slapstick humor, but Isha’s missteps often feel cringeworthy. Her clumsiness is more exasperating than endearing, and it’s a wonder that Rohan and Tarik put up with her drunken charades.
Good for a few laughs but ultimately unsatisfying.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-54783-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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