While wordy at times, this tale of dangerous liaisons comes packed with raucous emotions.
A modern epistolary novel focuses on love and manipulation in the Bay Area.
It is August when Cécile Volanges writes to her friend Sophie Carnay. Cécile is in San Francisco staying with her cousin after completing most of her undergraduate degree at a private Christian college in Illinois. Cécile comes from a conservative family (her father calls San Francisco “San Sodom”), and she is engaged to a budding young conservative blogger named Jeremy Gercourt. Little does Cécile realize, Jeremy has a past in California. He was once the love interest of a cunning, wealthy young local named Oliver Merteuil. An acquaintance describes Oliver as “a terrible creature behind a gentle face and intense eyes.” Oliver would love nothing more than to see Cécile’s innocence shattered. As he flatly explains to his friend Nathan Valmont, “I need you to ruin her.” But Nathan already has someone in his sights. He wants to conquer Stefan Tourvel, the husband of a controversial alt-right personality. All such plans are merely the beginning. The sordid (and later violent) events that follow play out in electronic messages (and some handwritten letters) exchanged between characters. The story draws inspiration from the French epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos and that book’s film adaptations. From the start, many of the messages in James’ tale prove drawn out. Rather than being concise, one individual rants: “Everything’s gone to shit and I don’t know what to do!! I’ve lost the first real thing that ever mattered to me! It’s all gone. It’s so fucked!!” Though verbose, the sentiments are nevertheless intense. They range from the erotic (one character reflects how he filled someone’s “ear with compliments and continued to kiss his skin and caress his thighs and cock gingerly”) to the earnest. At one point, Oliver presents a detailed explanation about the difficulties he faces as an effeminate gay man. People do not understand growing up with “the fear of speaking in class, hearing the waspy-inflection of your words—curled with the delicate-to-extreme lisp that you may have.” Such passionate words give these young connivers a human touch. Though they lack the mystique of someone from, say, Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero, underneath all their planning and trickery, they, too, have feelings worth sharing.
While wordy at times, this tale of dangerous liaisons comes packed with raucous emotions.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-50-171755-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: Candiano Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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