A satisfying entry in this delightful series.
A group of guests make meaningful connections and find unexpected opportunities while visiting an idyllic Italian inn.
It’s springtime in Umbria, and innkeeper Emma is hard at work preparing the Three Coins Inn for its latest guests. Lisa, the head of business development for her hometown, is on vacation after attending the wedding of her former fiancé, Matt. The trip is the culmination of a longtime dream; while she was in college, she planned to spend a semester abroad in Italy, but Matt convinced her to remain in their hometown with him instead. Antonio Bardo is an acclaimed Italian artist seeking inspiration for his paintings and a reconciliation with his past. New York socialite Sharon Asher struggles to connect with her 9-year-old son, Josh, a sensitive and artistically gifted child who is unlike her athletic and outgoing older son, Chet. And there’s Margherita Molinaro, a novelist whose debut was an instant bestseller— unfortunately, the manuscript of her second novel lacks the same spark. Her agent wants her to refine the characters by spending a few weeks at the inn and interacting with new people. Over the course of two weeks of exploring the beauty of Umbria and enjoying cooking classes and spa visits, the guests find their lives changing in profound ways. The third entry in Sullivan’s charming Three Coins series is bolstered by well-developed characters and witty, evocative prose. While the cast is expansive, Sullivan deftly balances the multitude of characters and storylines in chapters that alternate between different characters’ perspectives and deepen the connections that develop between the guests. (One of the novel’s most poignant moments occurs when Antonio recognizes Josh Asher’s talent and offers to serve as a mentor to the eager young artist.) Sullivan’s writing is lyrical with occasional flourishes of humor (“Surely, if Dante were writing in the twenty-first century, he would banish men who publicly shamed their fiancées mere months from their wedding day to the lowest circles of Hell”).
A satisfying entry in this delightful series.Pub Date: May 8, 2026
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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