A grim literary mystery and a hopeful family story, this genre-blending novel manages to be both charming and heartbreaking.
A down-on-her-luck single mom takes a job that ends up changing her life—and endangering her family—in this funny yet bitingly realistic look at small-town life.
In the town of Benson, Indiana, Jenny Newberg is having a hard time. She can’t pay her bills, her ex (and the father of her daughter) won’t leave her alone, her mother criticizes every choice she makes, and she’s always disappointing her daughter, Billie Starr, a second grader. So when mysterious men in black suits approach and ask her to do one simple job—seduce a man running for governor so they can take down his campaign—she agrees. The job isn’t as easy as she’d expected, though. The men never pay her, and the man running for governor asks her to work as his receptionist. With no better job prospects on the horizon and a debt collector knocking on her door, Jenny agrees. Soon, she finds herself fielding mysterious phone calls, getting threatening faxes, and wondering what, exactly, she’s been caught up in. At the same time, Jenny has to deal with the eccentric characters in her life—her newly engaged mother, the neighbor who’s known for wielding a crossbow in public, the annoyingly perfect moms at school, and everyone else who seems out to get her. But it’s when the mysterious callers threaten what Jenny loves most that her life really starts to spiral out of control. Kennedy excels at writing quirky characters and entertaining dialogue, but what sets the story apart is the shimmering thread of dread that runs through all of Jenny’s thoughts and interactions. Although Kennedy imbues Jenny’s life with the sparkle of humor, the quiet desperation of her sometimes-bleak existence grounds the story in reality.
A grim literary mystery and a hopeful family story, this genre-blending novel manages to be both charming and heartbreaking.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-13843-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
© 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.
