A stylish tale of the big city with biting psychological insights.
Marks’ novel skewers modern dating, work, and power in New York.
The story opens with Matty, an optimistic and unfortunately self-satisfied New Yorker, recalling a subway meet-cute followed by a memorable date that he’s absolutely convinced was a success. The scene then cuts to 20-something Vesper Elsegood, who offers a radically different assessment of the date to her friends at Cipriani’s: “He had no discernible interests, knew nothing about anything, yet somehow managed to spend the entire time talking about himself while proceeding to get blackout drunk and hold me hostage.” With that reversal, the book immediately establishes its thorny protagonist, Vesper—a consultant at a high-end firm who’s navigating urban dating, armed with judgment and a scene-stealing pessimism. Still, at least one person has caught her attention: Damian, a 35-year-old finance professional and one of the few non-creatives whom Vesper can “fathom.” Their connection is built on low-pressure stakes, which is why he makes it onto her dating “roster.” Then he unexpectedly professes his strong feelings for her at brunch—an emotional shift that triggers Vesper’s “all-too-familiar feeling,” prompting her to run away, rather than commit. The book later shifts to Damian’s first-person point of view, revealing that he’s impressed by how skillfully Vesper dumped him during a phone call. When she meets a South African named Caspian Van Wyk while in France, the novel shifts its focus. Devilishly handsome and disarmingly charming, he’s also profoundly avoidant, mirroring Vesper’s own emotional posture. That moment of recognition expands the narrative from the realm of dating into an exploration of identity in a status-shaped city.
Over the course of this novel, the author excels at using dual points of view as a way to contrast and better understand his characters’ behaviors. The multiple first-person perspectives alternate seamlessly, without interrupting the rhythm, but the story skips over conventional relationship arcs. Instead, it opens a conversation about the ways that class and power can shape dating and self-presentation. The novel also captures a sociological realm of dating, providing fictional spin on books like Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller’s Attached (2012) by tracing how differing attachment styles blur, collide, and often trigger one another. In its exploration of Vesper’s interpersonal relationships, this narrative has a sharp psychological edge that many urban novels lack. Works of literature often treat New York City as a romanticized, atmospheric backdrop, but here the city effectively functions as a stage for exploring ambition and avoidance. New Yorkers and out-of-towners who are familiar with the city will also undoubtedly appreciate the iconic locations interspersed throughout, from the SoHo Grand Hotel to Le Bernardin. At the sentence level, the prose is sharp and tactile, much like Vesper herself: “Clearly, I was conceived over a martini”; “I really didn’t have much choice. I needed a bit of a pick me up, candidly. And he picked me up.” Such comic one-liners set the scene for an engaging story of an antihero that’s enjoyable and memorable.
A stylish tale of the big city with biting psychological insights.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9798993486109
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Kinderspiel Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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