A warm, witty comedy of manners in which family members matter as much as the marriage plot.
When a Toronto-based woman attends an elaborate wedding with her South Asian family in New Jersey, emotions are as intricate as bridal mehndi designs.
Simran Gopal is in her early 30s, and while her career has hit a rough spot, she’s finally in the relationship of her dreams, with her best friend Liv Bridgers’ brother, Leo. He’s handsome, smart, funny, and wild about her—but she’s reluctant to introduce him to her family, especially since it’s been seven years since she communicated with the aunt and uncle who adopted her after her parents died. When younger cousin Geeta’s wedding invitation arrives, Simran calls Geeta’s sister, Kavitha, who throws down the gauntlet: Either Simran comes to the nuptials, or they’re done, for good. She heads south—and so does Leo, who isn’t about to let his big love find someone else. Now the feisty Simran is up against her far feistier aunt Veena; they function more like mother and daughter, and have many grievances with each other. In her aunt’s eyes, the worst sin Simran could commit would be to marry outside of their Tamil community; no one wants this formidable matriarch to know Leo is Simran’s love interest. Thus, the cousins—plus Geeta’s groom, Rishi—hatch a plan based on their favorite Bollywood movie to carry Leo through the wedding-week festivities without arousing Veena’s suspicions. Whether or not that plan works is way beside the point, as everyone learns a lot about themselves and each other as they scheme. Many novels of the past few decades have offered versions of Jane Austen plots set in India or in large Indian diaspora areas, but few of those actually rise, as this one does, to the level of Austen’s devastatingly accurate reads on how tightly connected communities celebrate, argue, mourn, and forgive.
A warm, witty comedy of manners in which family members matter as much as the marriage plot.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9780593834220
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
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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