A meditative exploration of friendship and loss that excels in probing life’s quieter moments.
In Carro’s novel, four friends navigate life’s extraordinary highs and mundane lows—only to face one challenge that none of them have expected.
On a Tuesday morning in 2024, three Atlanta-based women receive the unfathomable news that the fourth member of their close-knit friend group is missing. From that devastating moment, various flashbacks reveal significant moments from the years and months leading up to the tragic revelation, uncovering the fractures in each woman’s seemingly ideal life: Stephanie Summer Rapputo was a Juilliard hopeful who struggles to find satisfaction in her roles as a wife and mother; Andrea Raznick Duncan tamps down her frustration at being overlooked again and again, despite her advanced degrees and expertise, for a promotion at the investment firm where she works; Molly Kimbrough Milford is recovering from chemotherapy while struggling to connect with her teenage daughter; and Catherine “Cat” Martin Wray has finally opened her dream bookstore, but she does so alone after one terrible decision results in her husband moving out with their daughters. Congregating for book club meetings at Cat’s bookstore, the four women share vulnerable truths about themselves as they unknowingly hurtle toward that fateful Tuesday morning. From the opening line, Carro’s poetic prose invites readers to slow down and examine the quieter moments of life: “That early in the morning, a ringing phone can only mean that someone or something is lost or left—that some calamity, be it mundane or monumental, has occurred, spiraling the day off-kilter.” While the pacing sags a bit in places, the nonlinear timeline helps keep things lively by adding a touch of suspense to an otherwise straightforward emotional drama. The result is a quietly devastating look at the roles that women often assign themselves at the expense of their own desires. Carro’s thoughtful musings on friendship, loss, and the unexpected directions life can take are almost certain to stay with readers long after the last page.
A meditative exploration of friendship and loss that excels in probing life’s quieter moments.Pub Date: July 20, 2026
ISBN: 9798995966609
Page Count: 366
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
