A strong debut that feels timely despite looking back at a bygone era.
A family of Jewish immigrants struggles with the strict social and religious mores of 1950s America in Ende’s novel.
The Rosen family resides in their improvised 20th-century shtetl in New York City, a sort of mini-village in which all the members of the extended family live within shouting distance of one another. The family is organized around three sisters—Elaine, Rachel, and Helen—all of whom have young children who are close cousins. Though the family is secure, Elaine is terminally ill, and not long into the story she dies, leaving her daughter, Rebecca, and her son, Marvin, in the care of their pious, overly strict father, Harvey. Racked with grief and traumatized by a nightmarish childhood lived in the murderous shadow of the Nazis, Harvey is ill-equipped to raise the children on his own. The summer Rebecca is 14 years old, the entire family (minus Harvey and the other men, except for weekends) spends the season together at a house in Atlantic City, New Jersey. There, Rebecca—physically mature for her age and newly rebellious—is caught in a compromising position with a young man. Afraid of Harvey’s wrath, the aunts conspire to downplay the incident, but Harvey sees right through their efforts, and Rebecca and Marvin are left to absorb his rage and grief, which sets the stage for Rebecca’s eventual flight and “descent” into a sort of promiscuity deemed unacceptable by her conservative father and society. Ende’s novel is expertly crafted from the start—readers will quickly feel immersed in the small (yet also vast and complex) world in which the Rosens operate. The passages describing midcentury New York and Atlantic City ring with the lived experience of teenage years spent on the boardwalk: “The moving spotlight on top of the Ocean Avenue Wonder Wheel traced a path from the roof of the arcade to its base, briefly illuminating the wall against which Sal and Rebecca had decided to take their romance to the next level.” Drawn with no small measure of compassion, the realistically flawed members of the Rosen family are sure to stick with readers long after the last page.
A strong debut that feels timely despite looking back at a bygone era.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781627205580
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Apprentice House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future.
A boy band cruise is the site of one woman’s post-divorce healing.
Annie never meant to end up alone on a Boy Talk cruise, but that’s exactly what happens when her sister breaks a leg and has to bow out of their vacation. Now Annie is sharing a cabin with a stranger, stuck on the cruise ship American Fantasy with the 1990s band—and thousands of their biggest fans, known as Talkers. Annie doesn’t consider herself a Talker, even if she was a fan back in the day. But reeling from a recent divorce and dealing with complex feelings about turning 50, Annie throws herself into the distraction of the trip. What she doesn’t expect is to truly connect with the music, the band, the other fans, and herself. As Annie observes, “This was why people turned to religion or watched the Super Bowl at a sports bar instead of alone in their living room. It felt good to be a part of something where your passion was celebrated instead of mocked.” All the Talkers dream of having a special bond with “the guys,” but when Annie actually does meet Keith, a Boy Talk member who’s clearly going through a hard time, she wonders if their connection is real or if she’s just as delusional as the other (mostly) women on the ship. Straub depicts a wonderfully immersive world aboard the American Fantasy, one where each woman assigns herself a favorite guy and everyone is bedecked in Boy Talk merch. For five days, the Talkers live in a fantasy world where the only thing that matters is their connection with a band that meant everything to them so many years ago. As Annie puts it, “Inside her head, which is where she heard the music, it had touched some lever so deep that it couldn’t be reversed…the music was a direct vein to her own childhood, the least complicated part of her life.”
A delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798217046850
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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