A light addition to the adventures-in-Paris genre offers cozy fun to fans of travel fiction and tender love stories.
Personal discovery pairs well with French gastronomy in Almquist’s novel about the power of friendship and the thrill of second chances.
Around 2007, after her daughter has left home, Bostonian Jane Longworth is shocked to discover that her husband doesn’t share her dream of traveling the world together. She takes an impulsive trip to Paris alone, where she befriends two other women: Englishwoman Fiona Braxton and Véronique Moreau. Their friendships, along with the magic of the French capital, help each woman grow personally and professionally. Véronique’s career at gourmet food chain store Bon Gout takes off as she oversees the opening of a London branch; she and her husband, Jean-Pierre, work through their differences about how to balance their professional ambitions with their desire to start a family. Fiona, who’d been consumed with caring for her dying mother, slowly lets go of the guilt that keeps her working at her family’s factory; she tentatively pursues a job with Véronique’s company and a relationship with Emily Spenser, a very supportive academic. Jane follows her passion for food, enrolls in cooking school in Paris, and begins a romance with Bernard Dubois, a devastatingly handsome and charming chef. Long discussions and bonding sessions between the three women are interspersed with pleasurable, if familiar, descriptions of the sights and tastes of Paris (“the tang of the tarragon and the rich buttery taste of the bearnaise”). The three women at the center of the narrative are sympathetic and relatable, and it’s easy to cheer on their joys and successes. As the story moves along, there’s a certain repetitive simplicity in the author’s belief that the City of Lights can solve any problem. Still, Almquist is perceptive about the desires and fears of women at various stages of their lives.
A light addition to the adventures-in-Paris genre offers cozy fun to fans of travel fiction and tender love stories.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2023
ISBN: 9780985262464
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Cafe Au Lait
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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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