This poignant rendering of one young woman’s journey out of denial and shame into a budding self-love is essential reading.
Savannah Henry faces a traumatic experience from her high school years at the same time that her life expands at college.
Away from home and everyone she knows for the first time, Savannah finds her understanding of sex, consent, gender, and sexuality evolving through both an academic lens—in her Gender and Sexuality Studies 101 seminar—as well as through her own lived experiences. Befriending a group of queer people around whom she can be her authentic self and pursuing romantic relationships with polyamorous, lesbian, and gender-nonconforming folks, Savannah begins to recognize the unresolved trauma of her teenage years, including the fact that an unwanted sexual encounter was actually rape: “This haunts me every waking day of my fucking life.” Her relationship with her childhood best friend, Izzie (whose brother was Savannah’s rapist), begins to disintegrate as Savannah identifies the lasting harm of the rape and the social castigation she suffered in its aftermath. Izzie’s looming wedding forces Sav to confront her trauma and the vastly disparate lives she and Izzie lead with fresh eyes: “We were different now, more different than I had ever thought.” Jakobson brilliantly blends complex ideas and relationship dynamics with Savannah’s witty stream of consciousness and sharp dialogue. The author's fearless approach to depicting sex refuses euphemism, reveling in the awkward with unflinching accuracy. Indeed, the language of the book is strikingly intentional, and Jakobson demonstrates how easy it is to respect pronouns, the damage misgendering can do, and the myriad nuances of gender and sexuality—which are removed from their binary definitions and set free. Sav’s therapist tells her “We are never beholden to the person we were yesterday,” and the reader breathes a sigh of relief when Savannah finally believes and forgives her younger self.
This poignant rendering of one young woman’s journey out of denial and shame into a budding self-love is essential reading.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780593473009
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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