Romantic suspense comfort food—just like waffles with cloudberry cream.
After losing her husband, grandmother, and job in quick succession, a young woman strives to uncover a criminal conspiracy while falling back in love with her hometown and its people.
A year after her husband, Jason, died in an accident, attorney Katrina Foster arrives at Talk, Inc., the Silicon Valley company where she’s employed, to find the FBI raiding the premises. David Liang, the chief executive, is under investigation for embezzlement and has apparently fled the country, leaving Liv Tompkins, his pregnant girlfriend—who’s also the company’s chief technology officer, and Katrina’s friend—behind. On the same day, Katrina’s beloved grandmother dies of a heart attack. Shattered by upheaval and loss, Katrina travels home to North Haven, California for the funeral, where she learns that she’s inherited her grandmother’s restaurant. With a lead on a new job back in Silicon Valley, she offers to sell the business to handsome restaurateur Seb Wallace, a local man with a tragic past who has become a major success. Katrina also has a secret: Liv loaded a prototype of Talk’s AI software onto her phone after Jason’s death, and she often speaks to the chatbot of her dead husband for comfort. She starts asking him more questions about the night he died, and he finally says, “I think I was murdered.” Returning to the homey comfort of North Haven, Katrina vows to uncover the truth behind Jason’s death, which involves a mysterious Satoshi egg that contains the code to $30 million worth of Bitcoin, a possible international assassin, and a potential mole in the FBI. She’s helped by her family, Liv, and Seb, with whom she falls deeper and deeper into attraction. It’s a high-octane thriller with the grounding touches of Katrina’s Norwegian heritage, the hygge of North Haven, and a very sweet romance between two likable, vulnerable people.
Romantic suspense comfort food—just like waffles with cloudberry cream.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780840712578
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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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