A fresh, if sometimes frustrating, take on the traditional affair novel.
A young woman’s broken engagement upends her life.
Turits’ engrossing debut novel follows Ari Bishop, a 28-year-old New Yorker, whose life is thrown into chaos when her fiance, Morgan, ends their relationship after 10 years. The breakup also irreparably changes Ari and Morgan’s relationships with their longtime best friends, another couple named Summer and Luke, as they all look toward different futures than they’d imagined. Sifting through the rubble of her relationship, Ari flees New York for Boston, where she lands a job as the executive assistant to Wells Cahill, a tech CEO. Forty, British, and a married father, Wells sees the promise in Ari that she is unable to see herself. Almost immediately, they start an affair, the beginning of which feels too quick and not fleshed out enough. With Ari’s fresh start seemingly snuffed out before it could begin, Summer becomes increasingly distraught as she realizes that Ari isn’t going to end the relationship. Turits does a great job of providing a multidimensional look at how consuming, confusing, and irrational affairs can be. As Summer and Luke’s wedding approaches, Ari finds herself more deeply and shamefully enmeshed in the lives of Wells; his accomplished wife, Leah; and their toddler son, Rowan. Their newly formed nucleus slowly becomes a black hole that threatens to swallow them all. Ari—whose choices are messy and inconceivable at times—seems unable to see beyond her own wants and needs until it’s too late. Turits deftly explores the ways that grief, trauma, and secrets can manifest in ways big and small. Unfortunately, the novel’s climax comes too close to the end, and there isn’t enough space to explore the fallout.
A fresh, if sometimes frustrating, take on the traditional affair novel.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781662523991
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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