A highly organized and detailed book with a predictable storyline.
A corporate consultant thinks she has it all: good life, perfect partner, fast track to the placement she wants in Paris. But when she's sent on a long-term assignment to her hometown, Seattle, and must live with her parents, she realizes that she doesn’t.
Pencil-skirt– and Manolo-wearing Dylan Delacroix—a “Black Katharine Hepburn”—lives in Houston with her methodical, gorgeous, blond-haired boyfriend, Nicolas. He's just as organized as she is, and she finds the routine soothing after a childhood spent with no boundaries. But when she’s sent by her employer, Kaplan and Associates, on assignment to Seattle for a few months and Nicolas finally meets her family, her worlds collide: Her well-to-do artistic parents, Bernice and Henry, and her sister, Neale, are appalled by Nicolas’ disrespect toward her and them. And as Dylan tries to help Technocore, the troubled company with which she's been placed, founder Tim Gunderson seems ready to undercut her at every turn. Throw in her best friend, Stacy, who's Filipina; Mike, the gorgeous Latino boy across the street who's getting a Ph.D. in early childhood development; Linda and Patricia Robinson, his two moms; and Deep and Brandt, Dylan's new best friends at the office, and this story has an extremely full slate of characters who together draw Dylan back into the messy, unscheduled, opinionated, overwhelming life she thought she’d left behind. Readers ready to settle in to a long, detailed read about Dylan’s burgeoning interest in Mike, low-stakes neighborhood squabbling between the Robinson and Delacroix parents, and Dylan’s efforts to improve productivity at a “profit-sinking black hole” of a tech company that seems to have an endless supply of money will enjoy this lengthy tome. Some, on the other hand, might find its insistence on heavy-handed explanations and descriptions off-putting.
A highly organized and detailed book with a predictable storyline.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2927-8
Page Count: 347
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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