A quick read that offers a fun, modern update on the lives of a royal family many know and love.
In the 12th installment of the Princess Diaries series, Cabot brings readers back to Genovia in the year 2020 as Princess Mia navigates her hardest, wackiest challenges yet.
It’s March 2020, and for Princess Mia Thermopolis, it’s not all sunshine and pears in the royal palace. Not only has she just been informed by the prime minister that there is a worldwide pandemic, but her own grandmother has just been seen partying on a yacht with several fratty spring breakers from America. Within days, Mia issues a quarantine for the residents of Genovia, closing their small country’s borders…much to the dismay of her bar-owning Cousin Ivan and a family of bakers conveniently named the Paninis. When Mia’s husband, Michael, is exposed to the virus and ordered to self-isolate, Mia resorts to day-drinking and sweatpants-wearing, all in an attempt to remain sane with the entire Thermopolis family under one roof. Over the course of early quarantine, the number of palace inhabitants begins to resemble a small country, including Mia’s best friend, Lilly; ex-frenemy Lana and her Beyoncé-ified kids, Purple Iris and Sir Jason Junior; and her “InFLUENZer” Grandmère’s new American friends, Chad and Derek. While Mia works to maintain a semblance of normalcy within Genovia, conditions begin to escalate for the worse. Ivan sues her for disrupting the sale of booze, her other cousin Prince René stages anti-mask protests outside the castle walls, Michael is creating a vaccine with his high school ex-girlfriend, and Grandmère declares that she and Derek are engaged to be married. Can Mia protect her country from a deadly virus amid family lawsuits, purchases of 5,000 wedding napkins, and one ancient, pool-drinking cat named Fat Louie? Cabot’s beloved princess has grown into a strong, resilient leader, though her pandemic problems are perhaps relatively mild compared to those of real European countries. Regardless, Mia’s quirky and honest diary entries are a welcome take on subject matter readers know all too well.
A quick read that offers a fun, modern update on the lives of a royal family many know and love.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780063291935
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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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