An inspirational story lacking the unique insights to truly stand out.
In Errante’s novel, an Italian woman’s life is transformed by her extensive travels.
At 26, Agata, already an eager world-traveler, leaves her small hometown in Tuscany to spend a few months in China. Eschewing popular tourist destinations, her first stop is rural Yangshuo, where she stays in a local village, teaching English and learning Chinese at an international school. Next, she journeys to a Buddhist monastery in the Fujian province. She earns her keep by assisting with all of the meal preparations and spends her days learning from the monks and other monastery volunteers from different parts of the world. Agata then must abruptly change pace when she travels to New York City for work obligations. As she adjusts to the frenetic pace of the city, she meets Jack, a DJ about 20 years her senior, with whom she feels a strong but uncertain connection as they explore the city together; she fears their relationship will end after she returns home. When she receives another opportunity to work in New York, Agata accepts, hoping to reconnect with Jack and find the place where she wants to settle. Errante evocatively conveys Agata’s enthusiasm for the places she visits through her admiring attention to detail, both in her descriptions of her surroundings and in her interactions with the strangers she meets; she is appealingly open-minded and appreciative of each new experience. However, the reader doesn’t get a good sense of who Agata is before her journey, so it’s hard to see how much her experiences have changed her at the end. (She was already an avid, experienced traveler at the outset.) The revelations gleaned from her travels often sound clichéd: “China was not just a place to visit but a world to discover, a world that, perhaps, was too big to be understood in a single lifetime.” Finally, the third-person perspective holds the reader at arm’s length—a closer, more intimate portrait of Agata is needed to fully understand how she views the lands she travels through.
An inspirational story lacking the unique insights to truly stand out.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9783607090360
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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