A fascinating and sexy heroine sets this romance novel with a difference alight.
In Texier’s novel, a woman seeks love, romance, and a connection to her former self in the world of dating apps.
Eve is a 62-year-old French woman living in New York. Long divorced from David, her ex-husband and the father of her two daughters, Eve finds herself dipping her toe into online dating. She matches with younger men, receiving many messages until one from Jonah, aged 37, stops her in her tracks. Eve and Jonah embark on an uneven love affair that oscillates between being adoring and distant, with questions about age, careers, and maturity roiling at its center. Readers are often hard-pressed to find unapologetic, fulfilled, mature female leads in fiction; Eve, as a character, is a refreshing antidote to the all-too-frequent erasure of older women in the media, one who delights in sex, friendship, and travel. Texier does not make her too self-assured; Eve is confident, but she still suffers the pitfalls of modern dating and an uncertainty that often calls into question her marriage to David and her other serious, long-since-ended relationship with a man named Vadik. Eve declares passionately, with great resonance, “I didn’t aspire at all to a life without desire. Wouldn’t life be dreary without us putting a spell on each other?” While Texier’s message is welcome, the novel’s vignettelike approach to storytelling occasionally feels a little too much like a stream-of-consciousness ramble—not quite the voyage of discovery the narrative was perhaps intended to be. The men in Eve’s life often loom like shadows despite her independence, which makes the ending of the story feel not as convincing as readers might hope. Still, the meandering narrative reminds readers, quite bracingly, that women above the age of 50 are not fading into the twilight of their lives—they’re still discovering themselves.
A fascinating and sexy heroine sets this romance novel with a difference alight.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9798988282914
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Itna Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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