A great premise—the locked-room romance!—fouled by flimsy characters.
Two lovers must face uncomfortable truths when a tryst places them in the middle of catastrophe.
Until a few years ago, Jenny Parrish was a “stay-at-home mom with two kids, frazzled, exhausted,” doing nothing special with her life. Then, under the influence of a powerful new attraction, she “started to write, fitting it in—before the kids woke up and after they went to bed,” and became a minor celebrity as the bestselling author of a YA supernatural romance series. Nick Holloway is, by his own admission, a “golden boy.” A partner at a law firm whose antitrust cases make the New York Times, Nick is also a doting father, married to a woman who appears to adore him, and blessed with a libido that remains unflagging even under the most dire of circumstances. The subject of Nick’s libido is a central one because he’s been having sex with Jenny regularly for the past six years, and the ghostly lover in her novels is modeled on him. Now, for the first time, Jenny and Nick have managed to arrange an entire night in each other’s company, holed up on the 42nd floor of Manhattan’s newest luxury hotel. Their plans are interrupted, though, when what at first seems to be a false alarm from the hotel’s fire detection system turns out to be a real, and raging, conflagration. As the flames creep upward, Jenny and Nick find different reasons to delay their escape until the possibility is almost gone. Their night of passion becomes one of revelation as they are forced to investigate the truths they have spent the past six years concealing from each other and themselves. Told in slickly alternating perspectives, each chapter whizzes back and forth between Jenny—tender, insecure, prickly with superficial outrage at some of Nick’s more louche moves—and Nick’s vulnerable self-doubt, which he plasters over with a heavy shellac of lechery. While the looming threat of the fire keeps the book’s tensions high, the almost slapstick reliance on sex as a narrative MacGuffin, used to force the characters into revelatory inner monologues, coupled with Jenny’s baffling vacuity (she’s a bestselling novelist who routinely can’t remember the word “bulkhead”) and Nick’s compulsive horniness prevents the reader from developing an emotional attachment to either character that goes beyond an appreciation for their banter.
A great premise—the locked-room romance!—fouled by flimsy characters.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800836
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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