A giddy, harrowing, manic, and often dark coming-of-age tale.
Three misfits find their friendship tested in the 1980s and '90s metal scenes.
Wray’s sixth novel centers on Kip, a White kid who, in 1987, is 16 and has moved from his broken home in Tallahassee, Florida, to live with his grandmother on the state’s Gulf Coast. Soon he befriends Leslie, a Black bisexual man with a passion for heavy metal, and Kira, a hard-nosed young White woman for whom metal concerts are an escape hatch from her impoverished, abusive home. The bands they love—“downright life-affirming in their bleakness”—become important enough to build a life around in the years to come. In time they head for LA just as its glam-metal scene has reached its zenith. (In one funny scene, Kip lectures Mötley Crüe’s inebriated lead singer about his artistic failures.) Kip becomes an in-demand writer for metal magazines, and Kira tends bar at a popular club, but Leslie starts to fall through the cracks and uses heroin. And once Kira grows entangled in the Norwegian black metal scene, where rumors of church burnings and ritual murders abound, everyone’s lives become more troubled. Wray deftly captures teenage alienation, the precarity of adolescence, and the way multiple subgenres of metal can provide solace, be it via glitzy fantasy or doomy angst. That is, so long as life doesn’t try to imitate art: The closing section, set in Norway, features set pieces that make the novel as much a horror story as a bildungsroman. And though the storytelling drags in places, Wray is gifted at capturing the dynamics of difficult friendships, as Kip’s relationships with Kira and Leslie snap and reknit over money, addiction, and music. Metal might offer a form of salvation, but the story turns on the commitments the three make to each other when the music is off.
A giddy, harrowing, manic, and often dark coming-of-age tale.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780374603335
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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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