A wartime story of lost love and sibling bonds that will satisfy fans of historical family dramas.
A young British woman and her twin brother fight to remain close to each other as World War II threatens to tear them apart.
Tessa Armstrong has always felt so bonded to her twin brother, Theo, that it’s as if he is a physical part of her. That’s what makes it so hard when Theo joins the Royal Air Force to fight for the British in WWII. Unable to sit idly by while her dear brother and so many others are at risk, Tessa ends up joining the clandestine Special Operations Executive, where she’s presented with the opportunity to spy for Britain. Not one to shy away from drama, Tessa soon finds herself jumping from a plane into France and getting embroiled in one close call after another. Taking up a false identity and working as a farmhand, she discovers that one of the British spies in her network is a double agent. Unfortunately, she can’t seem to convince anyone else in the network to believe her. As Tessa falls deeper into danger, the book jumps abruptly to the future, where it starts following Theo as he tries to locate his sister. It’s unclear whether the pair will ever be reunited and if either will have achieved their objectives. Told in a close third-person throughout, the narrative shows both Tessa and Theo struggling with secrets while also pursuing personal ambitions. Where Tessa’s sections are full of action and intrigue, the portion of the story that follows Theo feels gloomier, and at times, tedious, full of incomplete recaps and a more sluggish narrative pace than the portion before it. Despite the uneven tempo, the book is full of evocative details about France and Britain during the war, as well as information about violent tactics of the Nazi forces and the espionage the British practiced in order to thwart them. The great strength of the novel comes from its description of the deep and unique bond between the siblings and from the author’s insightful exploration of the question of how well we really know even the closest people in our lives.
A wartime story of lost love and sibling bonds that will satisfy fans of historical family dramas.Pub Date: March 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780593834251
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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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