A sexy tease of a novel for the buttoned-up crowd.
A debut novel about discovering desire.
It’s the eve of the millennium, and Ina is an almost middle-aged academic who’s trying to finish a book on the playwright Eugene O’Neill, which will launch her career as an English professor. She’s mostly happily married to Simon, with whom she has terrific adventures around New York City, though not-so-terrific sex. Enter Jack, a composer Ina meets at a party, who kisses her on the subway platform even though he knows she’s married. Friedman’s novel is not about whether Ina will have an affair—the very first lines announce that her “whole life turned upside down” when she “discovered sex at the age of forty-one”—but how much she will risk to keep seeing Jack. Reading this novel is like watching a car careen over a cliff in slow motion, as Ina blows by writing deadlines, disappoints the chair of the English department where she’s a visiting professor, lies to her husband, and fulfills Jack’s ever weirder sexual fantasies. (In one scene, he confesses he’s turned on by necrophilia, and though initially repelled, Ina eventually pretends to be dead.) “The heart wants what it wants,” Emily Dickinson once wrote to a friend. Jack is a brilliant character, as unabashed as Ina is repressed, an unapologetic male chauvinist who smokes, peeps on his neighbors, enjoys porn, and can’t quite get it up, among his other winning qualities. And yet Ina finds him absolutely irresistible. Neither raucous nor raunchy—Ina is way too prim a protagonist—this is a well-mannered and funny novel about what happens when the heart rebels against the mind, and the body demands that “what was growling up from deep within you didn’t deserve to be ignored.”
A sexy tease of a novel for the buttoned-up crowd.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798889661740
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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