Dedicated to delivering its liberatory messages, this purpose-built homage to 1960s television lacks humor and veracity.
The perfect 1950s family—they play themselves on television—crash-lands into the modern era one fateful day in March 1964.
For 12 years, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have played themselves on a CBS series called Meet the Newmans. As Niven’s adult fiction debut opens, it’s March 20, 1964, “the night the world as [Dinah] knew it ended.” Her husband, the creator, director, writer, and star of the series, has been in a serious car crash in a part of Los Angeles he had no known reason to visit. In the next section, a series of rather confusingly time-stamped vignettes and press clips from the day before sets the stage. The show has received a devastating review from a prominent TV critic, threatening its prospects for renewal by the network; one sponsor has already dropped out. Meanwhile, Dinah is fed up with her life, and she’s experiencing physical symptoms of numbness; 17-year-old rock idol Shep has gotten one of his many female admirers pregnant; 22-year-old Guy has secretly dropped out of law school and is having a closeted gay relationship with one of his entourage. Yet the media continues to pump out PR-driven fluff on America’s Favorite Family. With Del now in a (secret) coma, the rest of the family must rally to complete the last two episodes of the season. A stunningly clunky series of developments makes Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique the deus ex machina of transformation for Dinah and a young journalist named Juliet Dunne, who becomes her collaborator. Downtrodden and trivialized at the Los Angeles Times, Juliet is so far best known for tabloid coverage of her relationship with a famous bad-boy musician. She and Dinah write a final episode that will drop-kick the Newmans out of their old-timey rut, with a hilariously hokey women’s consciousness-raising session convened along the way to help them hone their script.
Dedicated to delivering its liberatory messages, this purpose-built homage to 1960s television lacks humor and veracity.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250372444
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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