A conversation starter about gender roles and sex work, but a lackluster mystery and limited critique.
After moving back to her hometown, a new mother becomes captivated by an unconventional community where she believes she can reclaim her body and purpose.
When Dani tells her husband, Clark, that she’s pregnant, he insists that they move to Metcalf. Metcalf isn't merely Dani’s hometown; thanks to her father’s waste-processing “kingdom,” Dani is local royalty. Feeling the weight of her legacy, Dani fears returning with a husband and baby but no career. As she and Clark settle into parenthood, Dani grows increasingly frustrated with her financial dependence on Clark and his lack of gratitude for her domestic labor. Just as Dani’s existential crisis hits its peak, she stumbles on The Temple, a yoga studio where vibrant women provide sexual stimulation to and promise emotional healing for the men who visit. Immediately drawn to The Temple’s “village” of confident and beautiful women, Dani quickly befriends the owner, Renata. But when Renata disappears, Dani begins to wonder if the healing center really contains the higher purpose she’s been seeking. Hogarth’s novel opens strong with creeping suspense, laugh-out-loud humor, and smart critiques of the ways gendered expectations wear on people’s self-worth, enjoyment of life, and relationships. But the book is not for everyone. The stakes of Dani’s choices rely on the assumption that toxic masculinity can only be cured by cisgender, heterosexual sex; if employed in a way that allows the men to access their deepest vulnerabilities, such sex can “fix the whole world.” Also, despite Renata’s passing comment that she respects other kinds of sex workers, readers are repeatedly reminded that The Temple is not full of “cracked-out streetwalkers.” Temple women are exceptional—and therefore acceptable—because they don’t have sex for pleasure alone, and neither do the men they heal, but for the greater good. They’re not like other women, and especially not the caricatured stay-at-home moms who share their love of yoga but who don’t even know how their credit cards work.
A conversation starter about gender roles and sex work, but a lackluster mystery and limited critique.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780593467046
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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