Part historical, part fantasy, all top-notch queer romance.
A midsummer night’s Regency.
Miss Maelys Mitchelmore doesn’t understand why her dress is falling apart at a society ball. (It’s not even fairy-made!) Though the situation seems at first to be a social disaster, her predicament leads to adventure when Lady Georgiana, better known as the Duke of Annadale, comes to her rescue. Everyone fears the Duke, who became the sole heir to a dukedom thanks to a series of mysterious deaths. She doesn’t mind, as she is generally happy to be left on her own. Miss Mitchelmore, for her part, is grateful to be saved from ruination and then surprised when the Duke’s kiss on her hand leads her to a sudden realization that perhaps her lack of passion for any eligible young man this season (or last) is due to the fact that none of them are women. When Miss Mitchelmore is struck by yet another magical attack, she starts to look for the cause and to see if the Duke will help her fix it—assuming the Duke is not the cause herself. And so the story begins, accompanied by a great deal of additional commentary from our petulant narrator, Puck (yes, that Puck), recently banished from the court of Oberon, now forced to write to make ends meet. He proves to be an enchanting and delightfully petulant storyteller, repeatedly winking at the reader as the paranormal meddling continues and a beautiful romance between Miss Mitchelmore and the Duke begins to bloom. The cast is rounded out nicely by Miss Mitchelmore’s brother and best friend, both trying their best to help Maelys solve her magical mystery, but it may ultimately be only the women who can save each other. This is a lovely, pitch-perfect romance, with an alternate Regency setting that is well developed and has tremendous charm. The intimacy is relatively tame, for Hall, but the story still contains all the delicious tension and wry humor that he writes so well. Hall continues to prove himself to be one of the best romance writers working today.
Part historical, part fantasy, all top-notch queer romance.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780593497562
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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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