A coming-of-age story that is at once shocking and necessary.
A trafficked woman wrestles with her identity amid her traumatic upbringing.
Maya Augustina is a dental hygienist and married mother of two boys in Atlanta when she gets a communication from her past—a letter from her sister, Roshini, explaining that their mother has died from breast cancer, Roshini has it, too, and that Maya should get checked for the gene. This sends Maya into a tailspin—and not just for the obvious reasons. Roshini’s letter is addressed to Sunny, a name Maya hasn’t heard in decades, and includes the line “I never believe the lies about you.” On that intriguing note, the reader is transported back to Maya’s childhood in 1985 Guyana. Sunita “Sunny” Kissoon is her sister’s protector, enjoys playing in the cane fields, and adores her snooty friend’s Barbie dolls. Then Sunny’s family sends her to the United States posing as Neena Das, a dead girl whose parents had already arranged to emigrate, and whom she eerily resembles. She could pay off her passage by working for the Dases, and then she could start sending money home, her father says. Sunny is filled with equal parts excitement and dread. For Sunny to safely live in the U.S., she must leave all parts of herself behind, including her name, and fully become Neena. In Miami, she’s forced to work all day as a maid and farm laborer while living with her quasi–foster parents, the real Neena’s callous and unloving mother, Lila, and father, Prem, whose cruelty—immediately suspected by the reader—is slowly revealed to Neena. Neena, under various pseudonyms that she takes on at different life stages, must deal with the run-of-the-mill trials of adolescence, contend with untold trauma, and wrestle with who she is and where she belongs. And while Reddy puts much more care into developing her character’s early years than her adult ones, the story is too important and gripping to put down.
A coming-of-age story that is at once shocking and necessary.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798989532520
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Zibby Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
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
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