A loving shoutout to service canines wrapped in an engaging beach read.
A vintage Hollywood-style plotline meets the technology of the 21st century in this novel about an intrepid woman and her delightful guide dog.
In this sequel, Emily Main, who suffered the loss of her eyesight on her honeymoon in Fiji, is back at work and living with her canine, Garth, in her own studio apartment in San Francisco. But she has not yet tackled the job of unpacking the many cartons of new supplies that will enable her to function more independently. Unbeknown to Emily, halfway around the world, her estranged husband, Connor Harrington, who has been living in Tokyo, is returning to California, hoping for a reconciliation. As the story begins, Emily learns that her mother’s next-door neighbor Irene has broken her hip and needs surgery. Irene is the grandmother and guardian of 9-year-old Zoe, whom Emily befriended in the series opener. It is decided that Emily’s mother will bring Zoe to San Francisco for the weekend to keep her distracted. While there, mom will help Emily label and organize all of her new purchases. Add to the mix Dhruv, the socially awkward but sweet and generous programming whiz who works with Emily and lives in her building. The stage is now set for a drama that revolves around rekindled friendships, loss, new beginnings—and a wonderful canine. As in the first novel, Emily’s devoted, highly trained black Lab frequently adds his tender and amusing first-person commentary to the third-person narrative. The chapters devoted to Garth’s observations and musings are the most enjoyable in the book. Although the story follows a predictable trajectory, the narrative contains valuable and intriguing information about the technical innovations advancing accessibility for the visually impaired. These include computer and smartphone apps that convert written text into audible sentences and the versatile PENfriend, a unique audio labeling system that codes special stickers that trigger the pen’s auditory readouts, facilitating identification of all sorts of items. Hinske also inserts a useful reminder about the proper protocol for greeting service dogs: Don’t do it. If they are wearing guide harnesses, they are working and should not be distracted.
A loving shoutout to service canines wrapped in an engaging beach read.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73492-493-0
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Casa del Northern Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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