A touching novel about the power of female friendship, forgiveness, and honesty.
When a woman in need of a surrogate meets a happy-go-lucky socialite, she receives an offer she can’t refuse.
Nora Hammond has gotten used to her life. She works at the high-end Manhattan vintage boutique I’ll Have Seconds, spends lazy Sunday mornings with her husband, Jacob, and FaceTimes her best friend, Meg, to discuss the dream homes they find on Zillow. Nora is content with what she has, though she's gone through years of failed IVF treatments that left her with nothing but bills. Just when Nora and Jacob embrace the fact that they may never have a baby, their carefully curated acceptance ends on one fateful day—the day Evelyn Elliot strolls into I’ll Have Seconds. A “Kentucky Elle Woods,” Evelyn is lavish, stylish, and delightfully over-the-top, and she’s a breath of fresh air blown into Nora’s dreary life. Evelyn saunters around the boutique, dropping thousands on blouses, gowns, and the rare books Nora loves. Baffled by the sudden commission windfall, Nora can’t help but feel enamored with her new customer. Not only did Evelyn breezily provide I’ll Have Seconds with its largest sale in months, but she later sent Nora a special gift for her styling assistance: a one-of-a-kind Dior cloak designed for her mother’s favorite poet, currently worth upward of $15,000. Evelyn begins asking Nora to complete a few personal assistant–type favors, sprinkling in cash and extravagant gifts, until she unveils her biggest thank-you yet: She offers to be Nora and Jacob’s surrogate for their final embryo. Nora is hard-pressed to refuse Evelyn’s offer, but soon enough, Evelyn’s lackadaisical approach to pregnancy and the Hammonds’ financial burdens threaten to ruin the unlikely friendship. Griffin’s novel weaves a tale of hope in the advent of unexpected change. Nora and Evelyn couldn’t be more different, and yet they connect through their cause as mothers, almost as if they are long-lost sisters. As the two are brought even closer together by the baby they share, Griffin deftly portrays how, despite that fact that motherhood looks different for all women, the love remains the same.
A touching novel about the power of female friendship, forgiveness, and honesty.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781728264059
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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
SEEN & HEARD
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