An absorbing tale of dark psychological suspense.
A naïve college student is drawn into a glamorous and dangerous new lifestyle in Liautaud’s novel.
Marin Finch arrives in Chicago to begin her freshman year of college eager to leave her small-town life behind and make a fresh start, but she realizes right away that she’s just as awkward, insecure, and anxious in the big city as she was back home with her fractured family in Missouri. Then, she meets beautiful, sophisticated Bette Winston, who showers her with flattering attention and introduces her to her wealthy friends Ozzie and Harry and their expensive tastes. Soon, Marin is immersed in an exciting new world, sipping fancy cocktails, attending art gallery openings, and staying overnight in Bette’s luxurious apartment. Showered with expensive gifts, cash, and pills, Marin ignores Bette’s odd, mercurial moods and unexplained absences in spite of warnings and hints about dark secrets in Bette’s mysterious past. Marin skips classes (endangering her hard-won scholarship), blows off her housemates, and dodges calls from home, choosing to spend the Thanksgiving break with her new friends. Thrilled to be dressing in chic, sexy outfits and attending lavish parties with famous artists, Marin refuses to recognize how much Bette is manipulating her, convincing herself that she’s finding the confidence, closeness, and admiration she yearns for: “It was a false confidence, but I craved it with an insatiable hunger.” Bette’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic and destructive as copious amounts of alcohol and drugs (including cocaine, Xanax, ecstasy, and absinthe) blunt Marin’s judgment, blurring the line between fantasy and reality. Marin must hit rock bottom before she can finally reject her false transformation, learn to value her true gifts, and find the strength to break free and follow her own path.
Liautaud’s writing is lively and fast-paced, with vivid, pithy descriptions and sharp observations about the nuances of social status. (The author vividly limns a pretentious, market-driven avant-garde art scene in which artists are treated like celebrities and hypocrisy rules.) Both major and minor characters, including Harry, Ozzie, and Marin’s roommate Cassie, a conventional, bubbly sorority girl, are well drawn. At first, Marin’s passivity and misplaced trust are frustrating to the reader as she dismisses one red flag after another, never suspecting that Bette’s world is too good to be true or that her seeming generosity might have an ulterior motive. She simply follows Bette to the point of being little more than her puppet, but she becomes more interesting and relatable as she begins to question others and think for herself. Marin’s story is framed by an opening and closing scene that make it obvious from the start that Bette is dangerously unbalanced and that Marin is willfully heading for serious trouble; the suspense comes from not knowing exactly what form that will take. The story highlights the desperation inherent in seeking acceptance as a substitute for genuine self-worth and the importance of separating reality from illusion; it also deftly illustrates the ways in which rich and privileged people can shield themselves from taking responsibility for their damaging actions.
An absorbing tale of dark psychological suspense.Pub Date: May 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781955058292
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Blue Handle Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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