A fun, if minimally dramatic, tale of human and animal bonding.
A man, a dog, and a kitten come together in Bellringer’s playful novella.
Luke Garrick is a builder by trade who likes to take his rescue dog Buddy to the local beach; Buddy gets his kicks chasing after seagulls. One day, there is a surprise: Buddy comes across a kitten among the dunes. The kitten, whose name is Freddie and looks as “if he’d been out for a night or two on his own,” comes with a phone number. He belongs to the Jones family, and though it seems like it would great fun to keep him, he must be returned. The Jones household is, however, not the ideal place for a cat—the family consists of two unruly young children and their indifferent-seeming mother. The place is messy when Luke arrives, and the children do not even properly thank Luke for bringing back their pet. To make matters worse, when Freddie is handed over, he shivers. Luke starts to wonder if Freddie might be happier elsewhere…perhaps with him and Buddy. It’s certainly an idea that Buddy seems to approve of. The text is brief at fewer than 60 pages, and the story moves quickly. The focus is on the bond these three creatures share; it feels authentic, evidenced by the way Luke enjoys watching Buddy run on the beach and how Buddy is immediately protective of his new friend, Freddie. The narrative is light on conflict—at one point it seems as though Luke might be in trouble for bringing Buddy to work, but it turns out the boss loves dogs (he may just be “Buddy’s biggest fan”). The Jones family does sound an odd note, but readers never learn all that much about them. The ending proves pleasant for man, dog, and kitten alike.
A fun, if minimally dramatic, tale of human and animal bonding.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2022
ISBN: 9781035803569
Page Count: 54
Publisher: Austin Macauley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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