The perfect cozy read for book lovers, sure to break and heal hearts.
A widow receives a year’s worth of books from her late husband and learns to live again in the process.
Matilda “Tilly” Nightingale always loved reading. It was her constant as a child, it led to her job as an editor in London, and she even met her beloved husband, Joe Carter, in a bookstore. But when Joe is diagnosed with cancer, Tilly stops reading altogether. After Joe dies, Tilly finds herself going through the motions at work and at home—until she gets a call from a local bookstore owner, Alfie Lane, saying he has a special gift for her from Joe. It’s a copy of Matilda by Roald Dahl, the classic children’s book about a girl who loves to read, and a letter from Joe. Before he died, he’d visited Alfie at Book Lane and set up a year of books for Tilly—one for each month, each with some sort of instruction or encouragement. Even though Tilly has no intention of getting back into reading, she finds herself drawn to the pages and the bookstore. Soon, the monthly books are encouraging her to cook, travel, and see a horizon beyond the pure grief she’s been living with. As the bookstore becomes a second home, Alfie becomes a treasured friend. Page creates a cozy world that shimmers with whimsy even as she delicately explores grief. It’s easy to understand why Tilly is reticent to open up her life, but that makes it all the more satisfying when she learns to let people in—whether those people are her family members or new friends. Alfie faces his own challenges in owning a bookstore, and the scenes in Book Lane are delightfully reminiscent of You’ve Got Mail. The novel serves as a reminder that books have the power to shape lives, and, as Tilly puts it, “Adventures are waiting for you. It’s time to open the page.”
The perfect cozy read for book lovers, sure to break and heal hearts.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798217186990
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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
SEEN & HEARD
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