A heartfelt, if sometimes-overwritten, story of a first love’s lasting impact.
Two teenagers in a mental health ward fall in love in Grey’s lyrical and introspective novel.
Elizabeth “Zibby” Holloway is at the start of a six-week stay in rehab for her eating disorder. In the program, she meets Nico Hawthorne, a 17-year-old boy suffering from depression and anxiety. Throughout their daily schedules of jigsaw puzzles, mealtimes, and tending a basil plant they’ve named Atlas, the teens form a quiet, almost wordless bond. As they progress through healing and relapses before their eventual release, Zibby and Nico provide support, purpose, and inspiration to each other. This is tale of first love that exists in a liminal space, and Zibby and Nico’s story acts as a quiet reminder of how a single relationship can affect someone for the rest of their lives—even if they only knew them for six weeks in a hospital ward. Grey deftly captures the thought processes of her characters, with a keen focus on the monotonous day-to-day schedule and landscape of the ward: “The room feels less like a room and more like a waiting space between worlds.” The prose is frequently evocative, although it sometimes lingers on description at the expense of plot progression. The titular cartography theme is quickly established in an intriguing way and followed throughout. There is a feeling of repetitiveness, however. Every chapter seems to open with a flowery description—of a nurse’s desk, for instance, or the bean bags in group therapy—and conclude with a small epiphany. It’s a device that’s powerful at first, but unfortunately overused. It also occurs at the expense of developing Zibby and Nico’s relationship, which is built so much on unspoken moments that it feels nearly unrealized. That said, Grey delivers an emotional story and handles the heavy subject matter with grace.
A heartfelt, if sometimes-overwritten, story of a first love’s lasting impact.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781961841444
Page Count: 242
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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