A meditative contemporary tale about moving on and letting go.
A weary ranch hand fights to win full custody of his son in Kelly’s fifth spirituality-tinged Western in a series.
It’s 2010, and Guy Thornton is again working at an Arizona ranch, cleaning stables and tending bar, saving up money for his 15-year-old son Trick Delchay’s future. Trick has followed in Guy’s bootprints by becoming a promising bull rider, and his dad has encouraged him by helping him train. However, Guy is still caught up in a custody battle with Trick’s foster parents, the Merricks, and it’s one that he’s losing. Help arrives in the form of Star Clarke, an author, psychic medium, and life coach who claims she was sent to aid Guy by the spirit of Trick’s deceased mother, Sally: “She said, ‘Help him.’ That’s all. Just those two words,” Star tells Guy. “I thought at first she meant I was to help Trick—he was always her primary concern.…Now, though, well, now I think it’s you she means.” This plotline is intercut with an earlier story, set in 2005, of Guy’s trip across Arizona’s Mogollon Rim, on his journey to meet his son for the first time—shortly after he’d used violence to protect someone else. Interspersed among these storylines are sections narrated by Sally, a Yavapai woman, who tells her side of things from beyond the grave. Over the course of this novel, Kelly’s prose is rich and observant, whether she’s writing about the landscape, people, or animals, as when Guy observes his beloved mare, Sweet Pea, highlighting their connection: “Guy was glad he’d stopped when he did the night before because in the dark he probably wouldn’t have noticed Sweet Pea’s lifted head, the blowing nostrils, that cued him to slow down.” The book’s rather fragmented structure and leisurely pace may test the patience of some readers. However, those who know Kelly’s peculiar Western magic from previous novels will be happy to settle into this latest installment.
A meditative contemporary tale about moving on and letting go.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 979-8428569681
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2022
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
SEEN & HEARD
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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