A romance with sweet, spicy, and sumptuous on the menu in the kitchen and the bedroom.
A love-averse New Yorker and a New Age mineral shop manager rediscover their passions in Vermont in this novel.
Phoebe Stevens needs to get out of New York City. A very public breakup at a new, high-end steakhouse not only cost Phoebe her longtime job as a menu planner for a Manhattan restaurant, but a picture of her Negroni-fueled exit carrying a tomahawk steak has gone viral online as well. A friend provides her a reprieve from Big Apple infamy: a job setting up a gastropub in Vermont, part of a craft brewery called the Speakeasy. Her new home comes with a handsome caretaker named Sam, a tarot card–reading, New Age type who was raised by his Grandma Rose and Aunt Iris, two witches. He runs Crystal Persuasion, their mineral shop. As Sam shows Phoebe around the small town and she uses local flavors to craft the Speakeasy’s new menu, both suddenly find their appetites whetted for each other. They are reticent to open up completely, as Sam believes his one shot at love has already passed him by. Phoebe, meanwhile, as always believes passion to be an impediment to practicality and success. But just as the two finally loosen up—with a little help from Grandma Rose and Aunt Iris—Phoebe is offered her dream job, complete with a return to Manhattan and a chance to ruin her ex-boyfriend Drew. Stivali’s romance doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but it is still full of delicious food and steamy, consent-positive sex scenes for readers to gorge themselves on. Phoebe and Sam may be genre-appropriate attractive, but they’re still remarkably relatable, hung up on their pasts and constantly undercut by their own overthinking. The story never takes itself too seriously, with cat puns and hand-job jokes just a sample of its humor and Aunt Iris and Grandma Rose delivering as much blush-inducing comic relief as guidance. Sam, having been raised by these two, is a male protagonist who is more in touch with his feminine side, a refreshing change from some tendencies in modern love stories.
A romance with sweet, spicy, and sumptuous on the menu in the kitchen and the bedroom.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Heart Eyes Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2021
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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