Wry observational humor and a dose of romance strike a good balance with some tough family dynamics.
A comedian on the verge of her big break loses everything and returns to her Jersey Shore hometown—where she reunites with her longtime crush.
Delfina Silva-Miller did everything she could to get away from Evergreen, New Jersey, but at least her experiences growing up there with a deadbeat dad, a crush who frequently ran hot and cold, and a grandmother full of unconditional love gave her plenty of material for a comedy set. Just as she earns a spot at a high-profile festival, though, Del’s life comes crashing down, putting her in a bad enough bind to send her back to Evergreen. After all, where can a woman go when she has no job and nowhere to live while nursing the heartbreak of another failed relationship? Now she has roughly six weeks to get her life together and write a fantastic new set for the Brainwave Comedy Festival. Del is the narrator here; it’s a delight to be in her head, especially given her sardonically funny way of interpreting the world around her. Her love interest, Eddie Rodriguez, remains a bit of a mystery, and there’s a lot left unsaid about Del’s persistent crush on Eddie and what occurred during their 10-year separation. The small-town beach setting is bursting with memorable people, and Del and Eddie have a real, lived-in feeling as characters; they will undoubtedly reflect the fears, worries, and triumphs of many readers. While there’s a lovely romantic subplot as Del and Eddie reunite and reconnect, there are much bigger issues surrounding Del’s homecoming, especially her estrangement from her father and the way her focus on career affects her emotional fulfillment. It’s a “Can she have it all?” story, and though the book is fun and fresh at times, that feels like a stale question.
Wry observational humor and a dose of romance strike a good balance with some tough family dynamics.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9780063329584
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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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