Catnip for anyone who ever wished they could walk around in their favorite book.
A young woman goes on an epic adventure while living out every book lover’s dream.
“All stories are love stories if you love stories,” and Rainy March, a 27-year-old woman living in picturesque Fort Meriwether, Oregon, certainly loves stories. Rainy’s love of literature goes beyond the surface—literally. In her job as a Book Witch, Rainy has the ability to step inside novels with the aid of her magical black umbrella and her feline familiar, Koshka. Rainy’s job, along with the other members of the Ink and Paper Coven including her grandfather, is to save stories from being destroyed by so-called Burners—conservative villains who hop into books to kill off main characters from stories they find offensive to their traditional values—or from fictional characters who accidentally wander into the real world. Rainy’s life is a little more complicated than that of your average Book Witch, however—once, on a mission, she stepped into a Duke of Chicago detective novel and fell in love with the titular Duke. Unfortunately, it’s forbidden for a Book Witch to fall in love with a fictional character lest their love end up in the novel and the canon be changed forever. But then Rainy’s grandfather goes missing on a Book Witch mission, and Rainy and the Duke must team up to track him down, along with a stolen copy of Nancy Drew’s The Secret of the Old Clock that belonged to Rainy’s late mother. Their adventures have them popping in and out of books, including, delightfully, a party scene in The Great Gatsby, and uncovering secrets that could change the course of Rainy’s life. While Shaffer’s writing is a touch too cutesy to mine real emotional depths, the charms of the heroine and the conceit itself make up for it in spades.
Catnip for anyone who ever wished they could walk around in their favorite book.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780593983584
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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