A charming, magical romp with a focus on the importance of finding and building queer community.
A tightly knit coven of transgender witches joins forces against AI and late-stage capitalism in New York City.
On the morning of their half birthday, an otherwise unremarkable day in New York, Wilder—a 31-year-old trans Brooklynite—wakes up with the ability to comprehend and speak multiple languages. What Wilder doesn’t realize is that they’re being watched. For days, unbeknownst to Wilder, they have been showing signs of magical ability, and it has drawn the attention of others with similar Awakened Powers. Soon, Wilder meets the members of a clandestine coven of trans witches. There’s Artemis, the leader of the group and a powerful Seer; Mary Margaret, a teenager with impressive telekinetic abilities; and Quibble, a charming and handsome portal traveler whose job it is to convince Wilder to join them. Soon enough, Wilder finds themself feeling at home within the coven and comfortable knowing that magic is real, but when dangerous AI threatens to dismantle their newfound community—and reality as they know it—the group struggles to coexist and to hold on to one another. Osworth has crafted a clever, thought-provoking, and surprisingly philosophical tale about the importance of community, the dangers that reliance on AI presents to humanity, and identity in a world that can so often feel homogeneous. Told in a tongue-in-cheek, snappy voice by an omnipresent narrator, this is a compulsively readable novel that hammers home the idea that magic can be found anywhere and everywhere as long as you’re looking for it.
A charming, magical romp with a focus on the importance of finding and building queer community.Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757697
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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