An engaging and topical tale of politics and journalistic ethics with a feminist slant.
A successful journalist with a dark secret mentors an ambitious young reporter in this debut novel.
After an embarrassing career misstep and ugly breakup, 25-year-old Megan Barnes flees New York City and heads back home to the Chicago suburbs for a fresh start. But life in the Windy City isn’t without its complications. Her mother is running for Congress as a Republican, much to the dismay of her left-leaning daughter, and the single job interview Megan lands is a bust. At a rally against sexual assault, she tussles with an angry misogynist, capturing the attention of her personal hero, Jocelyn Jones, an icon of journalism “right up there with Diane Sawyer, Christiane Amanpour, and Leslie Stahl.” Soon, Megan has been hired to assist with PR for Jocelyn’s upcoming memoir, with the promise of a glowing recommendation and referral to an editor at the Chicago Tribune once the job is done. But when an anonymous Twitter user starts hinting about a scandal in Jocelyn’s past, the devoted Megan discovers there’s more to her idol than it appears. In her book, Smith spins a brisk, engrossing tale about an idealistic, occasionally naïve woman who finds her neat assumptions about the world challenged by a messy reality. Megan’s relationship with her overprotective, conservative mother is believably fraught, and her desire to find a strong female role model in Jocelyn is palpable. The author tackles weighty topics, including abortion and the right/left political divide, with grace and finesse. Despite their differences, Megan and her mother are ultimately able to find a common ground. Meanwhile, Jocelyn’s liberal bona fides can’t hide her rotten core. While the idea that a few vague tweets would prompt a full-blown “crisis which could damage” Jocelyn’s reputation and prompt a “horde of reporters” to camp out on her doorstep seems a stretch, Smith manages to sell it. Ultimately, Megan learns an important lesson for anyone, journalist or not: There’s a danger in making judgments based on feelings rather than cold, hard facts.
An engaging and topical tale of politics and journalistic ethics with a feminist slant.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64538-262-1
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Ten16 Press
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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