An old-fashioned form and two lively modern women make for an enjoyable novel.
A book order sent by letter from Paris to Seattle turns into a flourishing friendship.
It’s charming to encounter an epistolary novel these days. The once-popular form has fallen out of fashion in the age of digital communication, but Fay resuscitates it, setting her story in the early 1990s, the last possible time when it could be convincing. The letter writers are two young women, Kate Fair and Frida Rodriguez, who even meet through the mail. Kate works at Seattle’s Puget Sound Book Company and is given the task of answering a chatty letter Frida sends to the store ordering a copy of The Face of War, published in 1959 by journalist Martha Gellhorn. "I was told I’m the only person here who’s perky enough to respond to you," she writes. Frida wants the book because, although she was raised in Los Angeles, she’s living in Paris with big dreams of becoming what she calls a War Journo Dame. Kate, too, wants to be a writer and has finished several novels without publishing any. Their correspondence quickly becomes a friendship, their letters full of their personal histories, current dreams, and romantic relationships. Kate falls for a depressive young novelist, while Frida follows a dashing war correspondent to Sarajevo under siege—and suddenly her letters become heartbreakingly serious, no longer lively reports on Paris cafes but stark descriptions of the horror of war. She returns to Paris, unsure whether she has the courage to be a War Journo Dame, but finds a new passion working with refugees. Back in Seattle, Kate deals with her own losses and discoveries. Their voices remain distinct in the letters, often naïve, self-doubting, or overconfident, but authentically the voices of young women finding themselves. The book spans several years with lots of fun ’90s pop-culture details, and it often focuses on food, from peanut butter cookies to chiles rellenos, with several recipes included at the end.
An old-fashioned form and two lively modern women make for an enjoyable novel.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593852385
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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