A melancholy coming-of-age tale that grapples with profound themes.
In Kovach’s novel, a lost college student tries to find himself in Vienna but instead discovers the lasting effects of the city’s darker history.
After cheating on a history paper and receiving an abrupt breakup letter from his girlfriend, Alex Vogel finds himself alone with no clear direction. Despite his father’s protests, Alex uses his meager savings to board a plane to Vienna—a city his grandfather, who was stationed there after WWII, often spoke about, mentioning some vague connections to their family. Once in Vienna, he begins to practice his German and seek under-the-table employment, aimlessly wandering and striking up a conversation with anyone who’ll listen. Among his first encounters is the confident student Johanna, who quickly invites Alex into her world. Smitten, Alex accepts every invitation and opportunity to grow closer to her, including meeting her impressive, mysterious grandfather Heinrich. Alex begins working with Heinrich by organizing the old man’s notes and writings but is soon offered a more unusual task. Heinrich asks Alex to follow an old associate and record his movements, telling him only that the man “may be planning something unpleasant at a location in Vienna.” Weary of danger but too curious to say no, Alex finds himself exploring the dark remnants of Nazism and warfare hiding in plain sight throughout the city. With the story’s surprising turn to light mystery and suspense, Kovach flips expectations of the standard American abroad narrative and strives for something much deeper. There are plenty of funny cultural observations and moments of biting humor (Alex’s flirty repartees with Johanna or his mundane phone calls about the VCR with his parents stand out in particular). But Kovach is more concerned with more cerebral questions of history, place, and lasting trauma. His spare prose suits a dreary, stone-gray Vienna, where hostility may lurk under every chance encounter. It’s the perfect setting for big questions, but a morose and rushed ending makes the gloom feel overwhelming.
A melancholy coming-of-age tale that grapples with profound themes.Pub Date: July 7, 2024
ISBN: 9798990286702
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Parallel Grey Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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