Nuanced characters, lively writing, and a heaping helping of bad behavior make the pages fly.
The star, her lover, her assistant: complicated relationships among women thrive in a novel of the music industry and social media.
Shortly after Beatrice and Maxine Clark moved to Los Angeles at 19 and 18 respectively, Beatrice made her music debut as Blue Velour, inspired by a couch the sisters found on the street. As Dorn’s novel opens in 2019, the rebellious artist has just released her seventh album, Blue’s Beard, and is finally interviewed by the New York Times. The conversation hits its stride when the reporter accepts a cigarette and characterizes the album as “a shout out to your LGBTQ+ fan base.” The album’s title is indeed a reference to the subreddit BlueBeards, dedicated to proving that Blue and her producer, Sasha, are a couple. (Actually, Blue is bi—she has indeed had a long affair with Sasha, but when on tour seeks one-nighters with older men “who used bar soap for shampoo and had no idea who she was.”) When 19-year-old fangirl Rose Lutz applies for the job of personal assistant, she doesn’t mention that she’s the founder of this subreddit, and continues to keep it hidden as she assumes her new duties. Then the pandemic shuts everything down and Blue, Rose, and Sasha move to the redwood forest for a three-woman festival of songwriting and betrayal. The music writing in this book is outstanding, including intriguing real-world references and annotated playlists that will make you grateful for your streaming service. Dorn has a profound understanding of the relationship between an artist and her work: Blue “was in love with her music. Her audience. The celestial voice God had given her. And a different God from the punishing, intolerant God her mom loved so much. Blue’s God was benevolent and accepting and merciful and beautiful and probably a woman and definitely a Gemini.”
Nuanced characters, lively writing, and a heaping helping of bad behavior make the pages fly.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781668085530
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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.
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.
