A juicy mystery filled with gossip—and music you can almost hear.
While a singer-songwriter is striving to produce an authentic-sounding album, her best friend from high school is found at the bottom of a lake—dredging up the tragedy behind the music.
Dylan Read is a mega-selling, Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter whose country roots have evolved into a sort of “bedroom pop” that fans love for its personal and—although she doesn’t like the word—confessional nature. But despite her best efforts, the media accuse her of being fake. In a news article about the cold case of a girl who went missing 15 years ago, the headline gives the detail that Kelsey Copestenke was a classmate of Dylan’s, seemingly milking the flimsy connection between the two for the sake of getting more page views. But what Dylan hasn’t told the press—or even her publicist—is that she owes her career to Kelsey. Beneath the veneer of her success are the people who know Dylan’s secrets: the high school classmates; Kelsey’s brother, Matt; and the boyfriend she hides from the world for fear it’ll wreck their relationship and her career. But one secret is a mystery: what happened to Kelsey. As Dylan goes through each album of her catalog, she flashes back to her high school years in upstate New York with her lost friend, who was forming a musical duo with Dylan when she went missing. “Country music is about relatability,” Dylan says. “Just three chords and the truth, as the saying goes. Pop, on the other hand, traffics in fantasy.” In the story, there’s a balance of both. The flashbacks are entertaining and filled with cringey high school drama. On the less relatable end, Dylan still frets about what the press says about her. But what makes her most interesting is Layden’s respect for the craft of making music, from Dylan’s “fear that tortilla chips might scratch my vocal cords” to Kelsey’s early guitar lessons: “We’re gonna learn four chords and six strumming patterns and you’re gonna have to trust me when I tell you that’s all you need to know.”
A juicy mystery filled with gossip—and music you can almost hear.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780063315099
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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 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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