Flat characters and cultural cliches make for a disappointing read.
Three generations navigate familial relationships and one big family secret.
Rafaela grows up in a palatial house in San Juan, but when her father loses his powerful job in disgrace, she has to leave school and work as a secretary on a military base. When she and her husband move their family to Missouri, their daughter, Ruth, assimilates much more easily than her brother. Ruth’s daughter, Daisy, rejects the upper-middle-class life her mother creates for her in a suburb half an hour away from Manhattan, choosing instead to manage her uncle’s rental properties in Puerto Rico. This novel tells the stories of all three women, shifting in time from the 1950s to the present day. Cummins’ previous novel, American Dirt (2020), was a bestseller, but some critics complained that the author seemed to be writing about Mexican migrants as an outsider looking in. Her depictions of Puerto Rican culture and the lives of her migrant characters here are occasionally more nuanced—colorism and class play significant roles in the plot—but Cummins still indulges in tired tropes. For example, Rafaela’s mother is a black-haired beauty from the countryside who shimmies her hips and claps back at the patrician women who snub her. And the Puerto Rico that Daisy experiences never quite feels like an actual place. On her first visit to her grandmother’s birthplace, Daisy falls in love with Puerto Rico because it’s “just foreign enough to be an adventure and still familiar enough to feel like home.” This would read less like the tagline on a travel brochure if the move from the American suburbs to San Juan had any discernible impact on her as a person. She does almost die in a hurricane, but a natural disaster is not character development. Indeed, none of the characters here emerge as real people. Even the dramatic revelation that animates the novel’s final act fails to provoke much in the way of conflict or change.
Flat characters and cultural cliches make for a disappointing read.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781250759368
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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 dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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