A summery read packed tight with quirky characters and their ongoing foibles.
A young veterinarian travels to a distant island to study tortoises and finds more than she’d bargained for.
In her latest novel, Segal has whipped together a fictional island, Tuga, “the size of an English county,” that is its own “miniature world, a British Overseas Territory…founded on the principles of compassionate collectivism by a series of deliberate arrivals, terrible calamities and happy accidents.” The book starts with a young research veterinarian, Charlotte Walker, sailing from London to Tuga for a fellowship to study the endangered gold coin tortoises native to the island. She gets off to a rocky start: There’s overwhelming seasickness, for one thing, and, for another, the handsome young doctor she meets on the ship turns out to be not quite as available as he’d first presented himself. But once Charlotte gets used to the “bugs and creepy crawlies and biting things, and the terrifying isolation and claustrophobia when all around the sea roiled and there was no way on or off, just water and sky and the purgatorial emptiness of that unbroken horizon,” she quickly finds herself falling in love with both the island and its inhabitants. As a reader, it’s hard to resist falling in love right alongside Charlotte. Instead of driving, island residents get around by catching a ride on a donkey; there’s also a single taxi driven by a man who calls himself “Taxi,” who also serves as the only radio announcer. Then there’s a pair of prepubescent best friends, Annie and Alex, who run roughshod over the island and whose devotion to each other is sweetly moving. Charlotte soon finds herself enmeshed in much more than she’d bargained for—including the mystery of her own paternity. If the book has any flaws, it’s that not every character has been fully fleshed out—some of the more minor personalities can seem a bit flat. But the primary joy of this delicious book is still in getting to know the island’s peculiar characters, whom Segal treats with a gentle, quirky sort of amusement.
A summery read packed tight with quirky characters and their ongoing foibles.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780063360457
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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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