A lively, if uneven, coming-of-age story for adults, buoyed by an endearing protagonist.
In Barrow’s novel, an aspiring academic goes back to his hometown, where his determination to get in shape leads to a long-delayed reckoning with his identity, sexuality, and life choices.
In 2020, two days after Peter Hughes defends his doctoral dissertation, he leaves New York City and moves back into his childhood bedroom in South Hillford, Rhode Island, to avoid the Covid-19 pandemic. Aimless and restless due to a lackluster academic job market, Peter stumbles upon Fabulous Fitness, a YouTube exercise channel run by the upbeat and openly gay Ryan Carmichael. The workouts initially provide Peter with a much-needed sense of routine, but they turn into something more when watching Ryan makes Peter face the fact that he’s gay himself. This reckoning makes him reconsider aspects of his past—particularly his relationship with his former college roommate and best friend, Adam Miller, who came out during their senior year. Peter starts on a journey of self-discovery, beginning by coming out to his longtime friend Kelly and going on a date with the barista at his local coffee shop. He eventually returns to Manhattan; emerging from the pandemic newly out, he plunges into the city’s gay scene, navigating app-fueled hookups, steamy parties, and the unpredictable rhythms of modern dating. The results are frequently chaotic and humorous, but his misadventures take a serious turn when coming out to Adam strains their friendship and Peter meets his idol, Ryan. Barrow depicts Peter as someone who’s self-conscious, anxious about his late arrival to queer life, and prone to spirals of overthinking, but the author approaches Peter’s realizations with a sincerity that makes him easy to root for. The novel thrives thanks to its lively ensemble of characters and their sharp, fast-moving dialogue, although it features notably few characters of color. Also, after carefully charting Peter’s gradual life changes, the narrative abruptly condenses an entire year of developments into just a few pages, building up to a big decision and rushing through its fallout. The closing ambiguity—clearly intended to leave Peter’s future open—undercuts the reader’s sustained emotional investment.
A lively, if uneven, coming-of-age story for adults, buoyed by an endearing protagonist.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9798901740767
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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