An uplifting story of love and gratitude—not to mention frustration, fear, and failure—in all forms of family.
A 35-year-old Cape Cod bookstore owner is contacted by the son she gave up for adoption, and in being found by him, she finds herself.
When Harlow Smith was 17 and in her first year of college, within the span of a month she started dating her first boyfriend, lost her virginity, and got pregnant. She made the extremely tough decision to have the baby—she dubbed him Matthew, her “little pal”—and give him up for adoption to Sanjay and Monica Patel when he was just a few minutes old. And she kept the entire thing a secret from her parents, siblings, and grandparents. Fast-forward almost 18 years, and a teenager who looks exactly like her brother comes into her bookstore. Harlow faints, much commotion ensues, and it turns out that Matthew has not only found her, but he's convinced his parents to rent a house on Cape Cod for their summer vacation without their knowing he’d tracked down his birth mother. What follows is a story about incredibly complicated emotions: Monica’s love and anger and fear for her son as he tries to learn everything he can about his birth mother and her love for her daughter, Meena, with whom she unexpectedly became pregnant when Matthew was very young. Harlow’s love for the son she gave away but thought about every day. Her parents' love for her, and their utter confusion about how she could have gone through something so incredibly hard entirely alone. Her 90-year-old Grandpop’s unwavering love and support of her even as he sees the extreme pressure she puts on herself. And her friend Rosie’s unquestioning love for her, and hers for Rosie. And, not to be left out among the multitude of other family members who are part of this story, Harlow’s childhood friend Grady’s love for his 4-year-old daughter, Luna, and Harlow’s growing feelings for him.
An uplifting story of love and gratitude—not to mention frustration, fear, and failure—in all forms of family.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780593547618
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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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