Tough themes with a light touch and many winning characters.
A 30-year-old gets a re-try at the worst year of her life.
Sadie Thatcher has had a Very Bad Year. She was fired from her job as assistant pastry chef at a high-profile restaurant and her boyfriend of three years dumped her. She blames both things on her inability to keep her mouth shut, just as her mother always warned her. Alex, her ex, wanted her to play nice around his asshole Wall Street colleagues, and Xavier, her boss, wouldn’t tolerate her pushing back on his abusive behavior. Without a job, she’s given up her beloved studio in Williamsburg and is crashing in the spare room of her little brother’s best friend, Jacob, nursing her wounds with ice cream and The Golden Girls. As the year closes, she grudgingly agrees to join her best friend, Kasumi, at a circus-themed New Year’s Eve party where, drunk and filled with regret, she asks the fortune-teller for a do-over of the entire year. As the title suggests, the magic works. Sadie wakes up in her studio with Alex by her side and her old job waiting for her. She’s going to do better this time: bite her tongue around the finance bros, yes-chef her boss, and try to forget that sizzling New Year’s Eve kiss she shared with Jacob in the hours before the clock reset. Wiesner wisely does not put too fine a point on the time travel, offering instead a thoughtful exploration of Sadie’s growth as well as the ingrained unfairness of being a woman in a man’s world. Sadie is spunky and her outspoken sense of justice is wonderful. Jacob knows it. Kasumi values it. But Sadie is ambitious, and her mother’s voice echoes loudly in her head. Will she get what she wants by ignoring her conscience, and will it be worth it?
Tough themes with a light touch and many winning characters.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781538741917
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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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