An engrossing and sometimes-affecting teen story.
A girl with HIV tries to hide a secret from the boy she loves in Mullaly’s YA novel.
Aly Bennett has known Luke Harrison and Caroline Reese since she was 8, when she moved to Trinity, New Hampshire, to live with a foster family. The kids met in the Children Living With Life Threatening Conditions Support Group at the local hospital: Luke has an inoperable brain aneurysm, Caroline was diagnosed with leukemia,and Aly is living with HIV. Nine years later, the trio are still friends, Caroline’s cancer is in remission, and Aly has long been nursing a secret crush on Luke. She’s afraid to tell him about her feelings even after he offers to take her to prom. After all, she thinks, dating a girl with HIV is different than just being friends. To make things more complicated, the most traumatic event from her past has resurfaced: The man who gave Aly HIV when he sexually abused her is about to stand trial, and the district attorney wants Aly to testify against him. If she agrees, she has the chance to put him behind bars while also sparing his most recent victim the pain of appearing in court. However, everyone will find out that Aly didn’t contract HIV from her mother at birth, as she’s always said, and she wonders how Caroline and Luke will react to the fact that she never shared the truth with them. Over the course of the novel, Mullaly’s prose crackles with anxiety and longing, by turns, as when Aly and Luke dance at the prom: “Barely a breath separated us. But I didn’t feel trapped. And for a few minutes, I could pretend that we weren’t ourselves. That Luke wasn’t terminal, and I didn’t have HIV.” Aly and her friends are all well-drawn characters: typical teenagers who also must live with intense situations surrounding their health and well-being. Some readers may find the general premise of the novel to be a bit contrived, particularly given the longtime trend of terminal illness in YA. However, Mullaly executes the work with finesse, effectively balancing a believable young cast with high, real-world stakes.
An engrossing and sometimes-affecting teen story.Pub Date: July 5, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Favored Oak Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 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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