A powerful, involving drama despite its lackluster conclusion.
A terrible secret transforms a young couple’s life.
Peyton was born in a small coal-mining town in West Virginia and grew up in squalor. His mother, Abigail, was only a teenager when he was born and meanders from one man to another searching for someone to save her. Early on, Peyton pines to improve their lot, his “heart aching under the weight of a responsibility he wasn’t sure it could bear.” He loses all faith and hope, a predicament poignantly depicted by Yearwood: “Peyton’s belief in God was one long string of empty lights. When he was young, the bulbs had emanated a strong glow, illuminating his path forward. Then the bulbs had exploded under the weight of his life, and his anger and fury, and patches of darkness appeared, the string gradually growing dimmer. Until one day, without him even noticing, it went dark.” He finally finds an opportunity when he wins a football scholarship to a swanky prep school in Cambridge and befriends its privileged attendees. He falls in love with Isabelle Woods—an artsy student from the world he aspires to join. However, a childish prank threatens all of his goals. Before graduation, Peyton and his friends, including Isabelle, light some fireworks and inadvertently set an apartment building aflame, killing four and injuring others. Peyton and Isabelle disagree about their obligations. She wants to confess to the crime, and he anxiously worries about the impact on his promising future. With great intelligence and sensitivity, the author limns the contest between them and the manner in which it discloses their different characters and backgrounds. The plot dawdles, however, challenging the reader’s attention, and the conclusion—an unfortunate finale that belies the book’s restraint as a whole—seems contrived. Still, overall, this is a thoughtful, affecting tale.
A powerful, involving drama despite its lackluster conclusion.Pub Date: July 4, 2022
ISBN: 979-8839283169
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2022
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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