Environmental enchantment and authentic emotions elevate this winning tale of family, nature, and belonging.
A woman uncovers family secrets in Ashford’s contemporary romance with hints of magical realism.
Researcher Abby Rousseau is haunted by the memory of her mother, who died young, and has many questions about the family from which her mother was estranged. Shortly after Abby’s Californian home is destroyed in a wildfire, she learns that her mother’s aunt left her the family’s house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After she moves in, she starts receiving packages from her deceased great-aunt. They contain letters and heirlooms that begin to uncover the family history that Abby has always wanted to know about. The historic house is surrounded by an urban garden, a thriving and delicate ecosystem maintained by a handsome botanist named Matt (“she had a weakness for tall men, and this one topped her by a good six inches. He had broad shoulders, black hair long enough to curl just slightly at the ends, and a lean muscular build”). As the garden reveals its wonders, Abby and Matt make a connection, and Abby grows closer to the answers she’s been seeking. Several of her aunt’s friends, however, dispute the validity of Abby’s inheritance, and somebody is sending Abby threatening letters and defacing the property—she worries that she may lose the place she’s just started to think of as home. The people and places of Cambridge are rendered fully and fluently without excessive detail or exposition. Abby’s sublimated grief and questions about her history are conveyed authentically rather than melodramatically. The novel’s subtle ecological themes prove particularly compelling, with the verdant garden adding an almost mystical element to the narrative. Ashford’s commentary on the interdependence of species adds conceptual depth: “So much is living that people see as inert.” The climactic action and violence are somewhat incongruent with the previously established tone, but the otherwise relaxed and contemplative pacing creates an appealingly cozy atmosphere.
Environmental enchantment and authentic emotions elevate this winning tale of family, nature, and belonging.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9798998501302
Page Count: 275
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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