A fun and lighthearted novel about a luxurious boarding school heading for disaster.
The headmaster of a heavily indebted Jewish boarding school tries to save it from financial collapse in Troy and Parry’s novel.
Jeff Taylor puts out fires (both academic and financial) as headmaster of the Hampton Acres Hebrew Academy, or HAHA for short. He has written his resignation letter but hasn’t yet given it to Samantha Kleinman, the founder’s daughter and CEO. The school was built with unnecessary luxury, and it costs over $1 million a month to stay afloat; Taylor needs $50 million to pay debts and $20 million to keep the school open for two more years. The challenges are vast: HAHA is located in rural Georgia next to a hog farm, and the school is receiving bomb threats worded as song lyrics. The calls are hoaxes, and the students have dubbed the perpetrator “the hip-hop bomber.” But parents are worried, and Samantha (called Sammy) travels the world looking for potential students (“I’m doing it with smoke and mirrors,” she tells Jeff). With Sammy off in Kazakhstan, the school receives another bomb threat, but Jeff gets good news: Air Force One is being kept at an airport nearby, which means HAHA and the hog farm are under Secret Service protection. The school doesn’t have enough cash to make it to the end of the year, though, and Jeff needs some way to raise $3 million to last until graduation day. Troy and Parry’s lighthearted comic take on a boarding school gone wrong features zany characters with ridiculous human foibles, making the novel an enjoyable read. Inside the closed world of the school, which is global in scope but concerned only with itself, the authors deftly detail what the kids find hilarious and how the adults drive each other insane. Jeff has many variables to manage, and the way he moves from crisis to crisis is entertaining. Some of the supporting characters are underdeveloped, including Jeff’s girlfriend, Barbara, but the novel largely succeeds in balancing its large cast of characters.
A fun and lighthearted novel about a luxurious boarding school heading for disaster.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798988235804
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Lion Of Judah Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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