A well-thought-out story about a resilient woman who discovers her true strength.
An athlete reflects on her life after her husband’s sudden disappearance in Kirscht’s novel.
Two weeks after Brian’s wife, Annika, miscarries in 2007, he goes on a sailing trip with two college friends, Dominic and Nils, and fails to return home, leaving her and their 6-year-old daughter, Sadie, alone and concerned. Annika, who’s in training for the U.S. Olympic swim team, seeks help from her rich and powerful in-laws, and she’s forced to reevaluate her familial relationships when she realizes that her husband’s parents are more concerned about their public image than the fact that their son has gone missing. She’s had a strained relationship with her own parents, as well, since she decided to marry into the much-disliked Wolfson family, but she quickly learns that she needs to rely on them, as well as herself, to keep the search for her spouse going. However, after Annika finds out that Brian took $10,000 of their savings with him, she must come to terms with the possibility that he purposely abandoned her and Sadie. Kirscht creates a multilayered story that will keep readers engaged with unexpected plot turns that confound expectations. The narrative keeps up a steady momentum, and the character development via conversations and inner monologueshelps give depth to their journeys. In one scene, Kirscht creates an ambiance of insecurity and exhaustion that’s highlighted by Annika’s pondering her past and wondering how she’ll continue to move forward for her daughter’s sake: “Would she, or either of them, ever reach the point where the sandy woodland lakes weren’t their ‘real’ home?” The story moves through Annika’s growth and pain, allowing readers not to only witness her resilience, but also to see how she helps Sadie to persevere. Although Annika has moments of resentment along the way, she learns to forgive and heal.
A well-thought-out story about a resilient woman who discovers her true strength.Pub Date: May 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-09-835215-8
Page Count: 326
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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