A slow-moving narrative peopled by underdeveloped characters.
In her second novel, Loyd explores how suffering and our efforts to escape it define us.
The Doctor has left his ex-wife’s pain-management practice to launch his own with the support of Adele Watson, a wealthy migraine sufferer. Mrs. Watson is worried about the Doctor’s attachment to Sarah, a former patient who has disappeared. She enlists Ruth Aitken, a nurse she’s just hired, to slip into the Doctor’s office and make a copy of Sarah’s journal. Ruth has her own wounds, both physical and emotional. A philosophical sort, the Doctor asks himself, “At what cost do we wish to be cured of what we are?” This is a provocative question, and a headache clinic in the basement of a deconsecrated Catholic church in Brooklyn seems like a better place than most to ask it. But readers who want full-bodied characters and a story that goes somewhere might not stick around long enough to arrive at an answer. Loyd is a sensuous writer who lingers over details—all the details. Sometimes this is effective, as in a scene in which Mrs. Watson overcomes Ruth’s psychological defenses with wine and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. But, even here, the lushness and drama don’t seem to mean anything. The author does an incredible job of bringing the reader into her world without offering enough information to understand why Ruth is so susceptible to Mrs. Watson’s seduction—or how Mrs. Watson might know precisely how to bend Ruth to her purpose. As it turns out, Loyd is at her most evocative when she says the least. Throughout the novel, there are references to powerful winds sweeping through New York. Of course, no 21st-century reader needs an explanation for aberrant, alarming weather, and Loyd’s choice to just make this part of the background of her fictional world creates a wonderfully eerie undertone.
A slow-moving narrative peopled by underdeveloped characters.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781948072113
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Roundabout Press
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Endlessly quotable, highly entertaining, bordering on overly absurd, but perfect for book club consumption.
What do super-hot sorority girls and an assistant professor who’s a new mom have in common? Being a woman is hard.
Told from the perspectives of Sloane, a new mother experiencing an identity crisis, and Nina, a pledge sister at The House, the sorority that will be her ticket to lifelong success, Blake’s novel uses sarcasm, wit, and unwavering honesty to view the realities of womanhood—“femininity as a social construct and the ways in which it was an unsolvable curse”—through a satirical microscope. While Sloane and Nina, on paper, could not be more different, their lives are connected via The House when Sloane becomes the faculty adviser—“The House [w]as the ultimate safe place…something of near-magical significance. Sisterhood, Sloane learned, was a proper noun, as in: The House was a hearth for Sisterhood, where The Women grew into themselves.” The master puppeteer of this magical Sisterhood is Alex, a high-powered lawyer, single mom, and sorority alumni mentor who befriends Sloane as a fellow mom during a moment in need and draws her further and further into her influential circle. Alex represents women who have a seat at the table, women who are in control, who rise above the patriarchy. Sloane, jaded by the impossible ideal of the “Good Woman,” and Nina, enthusiastic to the point of desperation, are both drawn to Alex’s bewitching we-can-have-it-all aura, the unspoken mantra that hums through The House. However, the more they become entwined in the rituals of Sisterhood, the more they understand that beauty is just a facade and what lies beneath is much more sinister and downright surprising—you’ll see! The growing absurdism of the women’s desire to break the system, to achieve more, to rise against their common enemy—men—threatens to engulf itself during one final House dinner.
Endlessly quotable, highly entertaining, bordering on overly absurd, but perfect for book club consumption.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781250883452
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.
A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.
King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears.
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780802165176
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
