An observant and often witty portrait of adulthood in transition.
Three friends tackle issues of grief, work, and romance in Slater’s novel.
Set largely along Boston’s South Shore and Cape Cod, the story follows three longtime friends, Maeve, Lizzie, and Hadley, over the course of a single summer marked by matrimony, professional upheaval, and unresolved romantic histories. Maeve, a widowed publicist still quietly grieving her husband’s death (“Their wedding seems like yesterday, even though he’s been dead for four years”), is the novel’s most grounded presence. Her sense of control begins to unravel when she’s passed over for a long-anticipated promotion in favor of Pope Morris, a charming outsider who eventually proves to be more than just a co-worker to Maeve. Lizzie, recently divorced and fiercely competitive, measures her self-worth through her achievements and desirability, and she wrestles with her on-again, off-again relationship with Wade (a former lover, not her ex-husband) throughout the novel. Hadley appears to have achieved the life she’s always wanted, complete with a lavish wedding and a devoted husband, but even her happiness begins to fray during her honeymoon, revealing anxieties about control, intimacy, and the future. Slater writes in a brisk, conversational style that captures both the humor and quiet ache of her characters’ inner lives. The dialogue is sharp, the social observations are astute, and the coastal setting effectively reinforces the novel’s themes of nostalgia and transition. While the romantic entanglements occasionally veer toward the familiar, the emotional stakes remain grounded, particularly in the depiction of female friendship as a sustaining force. Ultimately, the novel succeeds less as a conventional romance than as a thoughtful exploration of women navigating grief, ambition, and reinvention. The author resists easy resolutions—the future of one of the friends remains unresolved even at the end of the book—allowing her characters to remain flawed, uncertain, and human. The result is an engaging, emotionally intelligent novel well suited for readers drawn to relationship-driven fiction that might mirror their own lives from time to time.
An observant and often witty portrait of adulthood in transition.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798999792228
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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