Could be the perfect lesbian romance novel. Partly for the sex, and partly for the classic yet surprising way it turns out.
The life of a queer, music-loving Long Island girl, 2005-2025.
In a major pivot, Korn’s third novel leaves dystopian speculation behind for a queer coming-of-age novel structured as six deep dives into the story of Susan Goldstein as it unfolds over two decades. At 17, Susan and her best friend, Katie, are the quirky music girls of their high school. Though Susan is the truer music nerd, somehow Katie’s thrifted outfits always turn out a notch cooler. Then one evening at a concert by Susan’s favorite up-and-coming indie band, ?? (pronounced What-What), critical encounters occur. Susan meets the lead singer, Jonny Lakes, a young gay man who instantly pegs Susan as a “baby gay”—something that had never occurred to her before. And that is the night she meets the beautiful Eliza Klein, who’s at the concert with Kyle Fishman, Susan’s former crush, and whom she soon recognizes as the subject of an almost-nude photo she’s seen on Katie’s twin brother’s computer. All these characters will play central roles in the rest of the novel, with Jonny becoming a key mentor, Eliza a lifelong obsession, and Kyle a problem that deepens over time but won’t go away, as he’s best friends with Katie’s long-term boyfriend. The story of Susan’s career and financial situation follows a classic millennial path—her first job at a Brooklyn-based indie record label pays so little she has to commute from her parents’ house on Long Island. Her unfolding career mirrors the profound changes affecting artists, musicians, and writers in the aughts, teens, and pandemic years, as Rider Die Records becomes Rider Die Media and ultimately Rider Die Studios, “abandoning editorial completely in favor of sponsored content,” at which point she is laid off in a company-wide Zoom call and moves on to become a freelancer and consultant; the sea changes of the #MeToo era also play a role. Susan’s emotional life also refuses to settle down. She gets involved with several interesting women—Korn writes lesbian sex scenes as few others dare—but the Eliza problem keeps coming back to haunt her, until the unexpected and satisfying denouement.
Could be the perfect lesbian romance novel. Partly for the sex, and partly for the classic yet surprising way it turns out.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781250432223
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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