A searing, cerebral debut exploring guilt, control, and the corruption of intimacy.
A brilliant neurosurgeon’s life spirals into moral and emotional chaos in Adler’s debut novel.
Dr. Elliott Roth is a celebrated Seattle brain surgeon whose calm mastery in the operating room conceals deep fissures beneath the surface. The narrative opens with a gripping, hyper-realistic prologue in which Roth performs emergency surgery on a young girl injured in a horrific car crash. The author’s clinical detail immerses the reader in the urgency and exactitude of Roth’s work: “I sank the blade full thickness down to the skull… The brainstem is where we live. Hers was being squeezed.” In this early scene, Roth’s Godlike control and detachment establish the novel’s central question—how far can a man push his own sense of authority before it consumes him? Outside the hospital, privilege and moral ambiguity define Roth’s life. Over dinner at Seattle’s Canlis restaurant, he and his charismatic best friend, Jay Wendell Walsh, engage in witty, world-weary banter about success, sex, and mortality. Their dialogue crackles with irony and bravado, revealing the toxic masculinity that underpins their friendship (“You look like hell,” Jay tells Roth. “You’ve lost at least five pounds”). When Roth joins Jay and his glamorous wife, Liz, at their villa in Baja, the novel transforms into a feverish study of desire, betrayal, and moral decay. The vacation becomes a crucible for hidden tensions: Liz’s sexual aggression, Jay’s manipulations, and Roth’s guilt converge in an escalating sequence that blurs the line between victim and perpetrator. Liz’s violent seduction of Roth contextualizes the book’s title and underscores the theme of power as a form of violence. Adler writes with the confidence of a practiced stylist and the precision of a surgeon. His prose alternates between the exacting and the lyrical, often fusing the two: “The water cradled the shore and lathered the rocks… It was another one of a finite number of afternoons when the sky and ocean began to fuse.” The novel’s language mirrors Roth’s own duality—sterile intellect versus yearning human weakness. “Who was I to be nihilistic when I had just about everything going for me?” Roth asks, a line that encapsulates the book’s central irony.
A searing, cerebral debut exploring guilt, control, and the corruption of intimacy.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798891328198
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 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 dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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