A vivid, engrossing portrait of a family amid the turmoil of death and revelations.
In this debut novel, three estranged sisters must reconnect to receive their inheritance and uncover familial secrets.
Annie LeBlanc, the protagonist of Larivee’s story, is living a happily married existence in Berlin despite the encroaching catastrophe of climate change and a rush of pandemics. On an otherwise normal morning, she spots a ghost across the train platform. At first, she doesn’t recognize the apparition. But when she gets home, she looks inside an odd box that she recently received full of old photographs from her hometown in Maine, and realizes it was her grandmother. Annie soon finds out that her two sisters, Jeanne and Mary, received similar mysterious boxes, and that all three are being called back home to Maine. Their father—a reclusive, harsh, and successful novelist—has died, and they’re required to be present at the reading of his will. After an emotionally charged reunion, the sisters arrive in Maine to discover that their father was fabulously wealthy, and has left them his entire estate, so long as they agree to spend at least one month together in their childhood home. This would be strange enough, but it turns out that Mary is also seeing ghosts and Jeanne has been observing them since childhood. As the sisters come to grips with their newfound affluence, they discover that their parents’ ugly marriage was more complicated than it seemed, and that their father may have been their protector all along. While a surprise to the three women, these secrets are well known to a small sect of locals (including another celebrated author) who have their own motives regarding the sisters. Larivee’s novel is not short on pathos. Fortunately, she has skillfully drawn the relationships between the three women, each of whom readers will happily follow. Many of her details are rich with the authenticity of lived experience, such as the author’s rendering of Berlin in an era before cellphones, “where a counter on the phone let you know how much you were spending, click, click, click. The longer the distance, the faster the clicks.” Readers looking for groundbreaking prose may not find it here, but those in search of a deeply felt, highly plotted family narrative will be delighted.
A vivid, engrossing portrait of a family amid the turmoil of death and revelations.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798992207316
Page Count: 264
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2025
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
