Like the ghosts who inhabit its pages, the novel lingers long after you’ve put it down.
A ghost story that focuses not on a single spirit but on an entire city whose layered history haunts its occupants.
“Meg had the unsettling sense that she was seeing all the layers of the city transposed over one another, like scrims in a play going haywire.” Meg Rhys proudly carries her “Spinster Librarian card” and does not believe in love, thank you very much. Instead she believes in ghosts, and in New York City there is no shortage of phantasmal company. Haunted by (accompanied by?) the ghost of her sister, who died at 25, Meg armors herself with the weapons that might otherwise be used to attack her: She’s 40 and single, she’s a librarian, and she has a cat named Virginia Wolf (a misspelling only Meg finds funny as well as a wink toward Shearn’s fondness for multi-comma’d sentences). When handsome Ellis Williams approaches Meg at her Brooklyn library to help him uncover the truth about a rental property his father owns in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the circumstances seem ripe for a traditional romantic comedy—that is if their trauma and grief weren’t compounded by the occult. The two of them undertake an obsessive research project as they peel back the layers of the house, and the city itself. Largely focused on Meg, the omniscient narrator occasionally switches to the perspective of a young Black girl whose story is slowly revealed. At times Shearn’s exploration of topics as weighty as gentrification, police brutality, and Black trauma comes off oversimplified and overfiltered by the White heroine. That said, it is clear that Shearn has done her research—and details about the free Black settlement Weeksville in particular are treated with sensitivity and knowledge. Ultimately, the novel is as much a haunting by the geography of New York as it is the story of a few souls who live—or have lived—there.
Like the ghosts who inhabit its pages, the novel lingers long after you’ve put it down.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59709-367-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
A deliciously dramatic look at how one woman’s past influences her future.
A happily engaged woman is pulled back to her hometown—and her first love—when tragedy strikes.
Billie Wright is living her dream, running a thriving fertility clinic in New York City and engaged to a wonderful trauma surgeon named Dean. Her happily-ever-after meant giving up her life in Wisconsin, where she left behind many friends as well as her high school sweetheart, Mick. Although they’d been deeply in love, when Billie’s ambition pulled her away from home and toward the city, Mick couldn’t handle either the distance or her busy schedule. Billie has finally moved on from that heartbreak—but then she receives a phone call from Mick, the first communication between them in years. Her best friend, Erin, died in a car accident, leaving behind an 11-year-old daughter, Phoebe. Now Billie must return home to help sort Erin’s affairs and provide some kind of comfort to Phoebe while grieving the loss of her best friend. Of course, being back home also means being in close contact with Mick. Their feelings for each other may not have ever gone away, and their proximity leads to big decisions for Billie. Can she ever reconcile her current life in Manhattan with her past in Wisconsin? And which one will be her future? Giffin knows how to do drama, and she ratchets up the stakes with every page as she continues to reveal new obstacles for Billie. The ending wraps up quite neatly, but the nostalgia-filled ride is full of twists and turns that will keep readers flipping the pages.
A deliciously dramatic look at how one woman’s past influences her future.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780593600320
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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