A smart, elaborate, and discursive modern romance.
Two ambitious and cerebral young adults navigate their relationships and careers with (or without) the psychoanalytical help of artificial intelligence.
Adrian, a 27-year-old rap lyric ghostwriter, is enjoying the recent glow of a writing credit on a track raking in millions of streams. Maquie, a 28-year-old half Japanese, half Swedish data maven, uses her predictive model to help a venture capital fund spot worthy investments. These two spend their days pub-hopping in London with friends, contemplating topics like rap, business, love, and most significantly, Sike, an AI psychotherapy app that tracks “subtle changes in your personality, while a real-life psychologist can’t (or won’t).” As Adrian and Maquie start seeing each other, Adrian often consults Sike for advice (although using Sike in public is “considered a little graceless, like giving real estate advice, or discussing crypto”). The therapeutic authority of Sike’s AI language is particularly engrossing, but while the benefits of Sike are vaunted, the dangers and potential complications of such a breakthrough in mental health technology are only disappointingly glanced at. Lunzer is eager to demonstrate his awareness of the thorny issues his book raises, and initially succeeds with clever, self-assured prose. He even acknowledges the uncomfortable “race and…class thing” of Adrian being a “white and university-educated North London Jew,” an identity Lunzer discloses only after painting Adrian as a passionate and encyclopedic student of hip-hop history. But Lunzer’s acrobatic exposition stumbles in the second act. The emotional truths of Adrian and Maquie’s lives are muted through overintellectualization; much more oxygen is given to granular snippets of privileged life in an alternate present-day reality. Still, Lunzer relishes in delightful phrasing and figurative language; Maquie is once described “as though the jaws of an unpleasant thought had snapped at her eyes from inside her head.”
A smart, elaborate, and discursive modern romance.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781250343123
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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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