A well-crafted and enchanting historical love story.
After losing her first great love to illness, a 17th-century Englishwoman falls for a forbidden man.
Cecilia couldn’t believe her good luck when she married William Thorowgood, the boy she’d always loved. Unfortunately, soon after the wedding, William falls victim to the plague and succumbs to a quick death. Following this loss, Cecilia spirals into a deep depression. Her sister, Margaret, takes her in, hoping to nurse her back to health. When days turn to weeks with no improvement, Margaret’s power-hungry husband, Robert Eden, declares Cecilia must take a new husband or remove herself from their home by the end of summer. Desperate to save Cecilia from an uncertain future, Margaret seeks help from David Mendes, a Jewish doctor from Portugal with a reputation for fixing incurable ailments, including melancholy. Cecilia is initially taken aback by David’s unfamiliar customs, but she soon begins to appreciate his quiet manner and thoughtful care. Before long, the pair develop a genuine friendship, and David’s visits help Cecilia improve—so much so that she begins sneaking out of Margaret’s home to explore London. These outings lead to a chance meeting with David, which ignites a new relationship between them. It’s clear they’re developing deeper feelings for each other, but given their vastly different backgrounds, their love is an impossibility. With rich prose and a plethora of delightful period details, shifting between Cecilia’s and David’s first-person perspectives, the story deftly explores their feelings of unlikely connection, as well as the isolation and hopelessness that can accompany loss of a loved one. Despite the sorrow burdening both main characters, the plot moves forward at an engaging clip, and the author manages to include sprinkles of levity at just the right pace to prevent the book from feeling oppressively bleak. While the writing often feels too modern, with characters acting in a manner too familiar or uttering surprisingly modern phrases, the story is sufficiently engaging to render the anachronisms forgivable.
A well-crafted and enchanting historical love story.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780593597873
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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