Florida’s humorist laureate finds chaos and comedy in the Everglades.
Gold bars, pythons, and TikTok videos of swamp monsters add up to a hilarious Florida tale.
Jesse Braddock has a spectacularly handsome boyfriend and a darling baby girl, but she’s not feeling the happily-ever-after. Slater may look like “classic Tom Cruise,” but he’s a philanderer who’s spent most of Jesse’s trust fund, and now they’re living in a broken-down cabin in the Everglades with Slater’s videographer pal, Kark, “and ninety trillion mosquitoes. And no money.” Slater and Kark’s highest ambition is to sell a reality TV show called Glades Man, which would feature Slater taking his shirt off among the palmettos. After a close encounter with a python, Jesse is developing an ambition to take baby Willa and flee, but how? Nearby, Ken and Brad Bortle, proprietors of the failing Bortle Brothers Bait & Beer, are cooking up a get-rich scheme of their own (well, Ken’s). After seeing a viral video of Phil Teagler, an alcoholic former newspaper reporter, attempting to play a costumed character at a rich little girl’s birthday party, with dire but hilarious results, Ken has the idea of making a video of Phil playing a cryptid, which they dub the Everglades Melon Monster for its giant head (from a repurposed Dora the Explorer costume). Once that hits the sound and fury of TikTok, they’ll sell a ton of Melon Monster merch. When Ken, Kark, and Slater meet, they quickly realize they can join forces: Glades Man vs. Melon Monster. Meanwhile, Jesse has literally stumbled upon a legendary cache of Civil War–era gold bars buried in the Glades long ago. She has also run afoul of the Campbell brothers, Duck and Billy, a couple of ex-cons who, despite their childish nicknames, are mean as snakes but not as smart. In desperate need of help and a ride to Miami to consult a lawyer, she joins forces with Brad. All of those plot threads will get further entangled with Eastern European mobsters, the secretary of the interior, and a python hunter with an “emotional support boar,” among other things. Barry makes mirth of all this mayhem with his usual aplomb.
Florida’s humorist laureate finds chaos and comedy in the Everglades.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781982191337
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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