Taut, funny, and poignant; a tremendous debut.
A young single mother with a carefully guarded past reluctantly chaperones a school trip across California at the behest of her determined and curious daughter.
In 1989, 18-year-old Szonja Imre arrives in Los Angeles from Hungary to spend the summer with her married sister. In 2001, Sonia Imre dodges nosy PTA parents curious about a single mother with an unspecified background and a cagey demeanor. The how and why of this transformation is slowly revealed across both timelines, with excursions back and forth and in between, to Budapest, D.C., and California suburbia. When Szonja first arrives in Los Angeles, she’s surprised and a little disappointed by the rigidly structured life her once-close elder sister, Rina, has built. Now married to an Orthodox Jewish man, adult Rina has fully embraced the Jewish faith she and Szonja were raised to quietly ignore by their parents, both assiduously assimilated children of the Holocaust. As tension between the sisters grows, Szonja finds new connection with a boy from the Hebrew class she reluctantly attends each week. In the new millennium, Sonia’s daughter Mila has a plan: a parent-trap under the cover of a school orchestra trip to force her secretive mother to finally introduce her to the man who, she is certain, must be her father. But for Sonia, the trip is a series of minefields as she seeks to protect herself and her daughter from the fact of her less-than-legal status in America. Sonia/Szonja is a deliciously vivid character, her wry perspective revealing a character as spiky and vulnerable as the novel’s title suggests. Fabriczki’s prose dances lightly in a brisk, knowing, slightly aloof third-person present-tense voice perfectly tuned to its main character. Emotions slam in from the side, grief and alienation and the slow-dawning realization that “life unspools, one decision at a time cutting out entire alternative worlds, an endless series of bifurcations nudging each person into a life they have no way of knowing they will like or not.”
Taut, funny, and poignant; a tremendous debut.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781668091913
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Summit
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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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