An artfully disturbing story, as captivating as it is heart-wrenching.
A troubled teen is sent to a Baptist reform school where religious fanaticism and violence reign.
Sam Snyder is a wayward 14-year-old from California. He’s prone to stealing, addicted to porn, and is kicked out of his Christian school for lacking “spiritual desire.” Under the pretense of sending him to spend the summer in Missouri with a godfather of whom he’s never heard, Sam’s mom shuttles him to a Baptist reform school—the Mount Zion Baptist Boarding Academy—hidden deep in the woods, his new home for the next year. At Mount Zion, they quickly strip-search him, clumsily cut his hair, and present him with the list of austere prohibitions by Charles Ward, a camp leader called “Papa.” Sam rejects the angry religious extremism that permeates the school (Papa mockingly decries the “liberal church” as a “bunch of effeminate hippies”). Even more discomfiting is the ubiquitous threat of violence. Many of Sam’s schoolmates are all but hardened criminals, always ready to explode. Debut author Echan poignantly chronicles Sam’s plight: Afraid to escape, unable to be reborn religiously, he chooses the strategic path of outward conformity. “I was never gonna grow the balls to run away. The only other option after that was to get saved for real, and no way in hell I was joining the looney bin. I went with my gut. Fake it til you make it, you know.” Based on a true story, the author’s tale is quietly terrifying—one feels an amorphous evil lurking within every shadow. And when one of his schoolmates is murdered, Sam must reckon with the dire nature of his predicament. This is a gripping novel, thoughtful and dramatically harrowing.
An artfully disturbing story, as captivating as it is heart-wrenching.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Quoir
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2020
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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