An entertaining, if uncomfortably plausible, warning about just how quickly everyday freedoms can be taken away.
After a tyrannical president turns America into a religious police state, an underground rebel group schemes to exploit a natural disaster in Boyd’s novel.
The year is 2028, and the United States has just elected Christian nationalist James Dorritt Alger III to be president. After appointing pastor John Christian Hillcox as secretary of the newly established Department of Faith, Alger promptly changes the country’s name to the United Christian States of America. So begins a reign of terror, led largely by the unhinged Hillcox (who beats his “whoring” wife with a belt in private while preaching the love of Jesus in public). The remaining liberal Supreme Court justices are impeached and freedom of the press is revoked, leaving only three administration-run TV news networks. An underground resistance movement springs up, with many members—like Liz Boorman, a journalist for one of the networks—working to dismantle government power from within. When an earthquake decimates a large portion of Portland, Oregon, chaos breaks out, and the resistance sees its chance to rescue the country from religious fanaticism. The two sides clash in an epic, violent showdown to determine the future of America and its people. A cautionary tale that feels frighteningly relevant, the narrative feels almost frenetic in its desire to comment on everything from religious hypocrisy and racism to willful ignorance and greed. Boyd takes on themes of power, control, freedom, and morality with the subtlety of a sledgehammer (the government-run TV station is called “SHOX News”), and her point is clear: Sacrificing democracy in favor of a charismatic false prophet will doom a nation. While the novel may lack nuance, it does contain moments of surprising poeticism: “Hope and dread had come together in the dead of night, in a city devastated by Nature, and a country destroyed by Man.” Boyd has penned a chaotic and compelling political thriller that might just double as a call to arms.
An entertaining, if uncomfortably plausible, warning about just how quickly everyday freedoms can be taken away.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2024
ISBN: 9781662942037
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Rebel Island Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 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 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
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