A tear-jerking romance well suited for fans of complicated family dynamics and unlikely affairs.
A young woman cares for her dying sister and finds herself struggling with romantic feelings for her sibling’s husband in this novel.
When Natasha Boran, the free-spirited misfit of her family, receives word that her sister, Nicky, is dying, she heads immediately from her job in Africa to her hometown of Eminence, Missouri. Natasha, also known as Taz, has been in Congo, working for Doctors Without Borders and trying to forget the rift between herself and her family. Nine years earlier, she found herself falling in love with her sister’s fiance, and rather than destroy Nicky’s future, Taz high-tailed it out of town before the wedding. Although Taz feels she was misjudged and unfairly maligned by Nicky and their parents, when she learns her sister is dying, all sour feelings are instantly forgotten. When Taz gets to Missouri, she moves in with Nicky; her husband, Rafe; and their two young kids. As Taz and Rafe nurse Nicky through her final days, many of Taz’s old feelings for him come rushing back to her. She slowly begins to question whether Nicky might actually be trying to push Taz and Rafe closer to each other. Meanwhile, the sisters’ mother is constantly stopping by the house, berating Taz for her every choice and making emotionally trying circumstances all the more difficult. Told in alternating voices from Taz’s and Rafe’s perspectives, Barker’s story delves deep into the pain the protagonist feels at losing a sibling and her confusion over how to handle her feelings for Rafe. The chapters narrated by Rafe feel more topical, focusing mainly on his attraction to Taz and his struggle to resist his yearslong yearning for her. With angry parents and a terminally ill sibling, there are many intensely emotional moments throughout the tale as well as some surprisingly spicy sex scenes. Reading as both a family drama and a romance, this story tries to accomplish a lot. The result is a sometimes-disjointed narrative in which characters’ emotions flip on a dime. Even so, the relationship between Taz and Rafe feels sufficiently authentic and compelling that readers will keep turning the pages to see how the tale ends.
A tear-jerking romance well suited for fans of complicated family dynamics and unlikely affairs.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-988733-56-2
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
