An often unsettling story, but one that genre fans may find compelling.
Auswat’s queer romance novel centers on a high school senior’s crush on his teacher and its potentially destructive consequences.
In the (fictional) city of Point Liberty, 18-year-old Liam is nearing graduation and struggling with a serious crush on Mr. Hilton, his 30-something English teacher who’s married to a woman. The novel opens with a line that shows Liam’s intense, nearly obsessive infatuation: “I can’t believe he’s wearing that cologne again. Today of all days. A test day.” The developing dynamic between student and teacher is slow and deliberate—from a perplexing run-in at a school urinal to a tutoring session at Mr. Hilton’s that ends with Liam secretly watching his instructor in the shower. The novel slow-burns toward a physical encounter—and doesn’t stop there. As the power dynamic between the pair changes, complicated by outside pressure from Hilton’s wife, Dixie, the dangerous, uncertain ramifications of the affair become clearer: Which one of them will ultimately be destroyed by the relationship? The first-person narration is one of the book’s greatest strengths, with Liam’s voice dually capturing teenage angst and a credible coming-of-age consciousness. The student’s friendship with Lucy, his only friend, provides occasional grounding while also serving as a reminder that a sense of isolation dominates the atmosphere. After all, Liam’s feeling of alienation is what compounds his obsession and leaves him vulnerable; most of his fellow students apparently want nothing to do with a kid who has alcoholic parents and a sister with Down syndrome. Antigay slurs, ableist remarks, and other forms of abuse from other characters circulate through the prose, often without response. This situation adds a psychological dimension to Liam’s attraction to someone who seems to be a safe adult to lean on. Certain lines land strangely, though (“You look like you were in the Holocaust”), and a plot thread involving nonconsensual photography emerges that some may find triggering.
An often unsettling story, but one that genre fans may find compelling.Pub Date: June 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798282286274
Page Count: 322
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2026
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
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
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