An engaging tale about celebrity, love, and the search for one’s place in the world.
A newly famous woman attempts to seize control of her life in this comic novel.
Former actress BunnyLee Welles has just returned to Los Angeles for a wedding after four years bumming around Southeast Asia. Many of her old acquaintances have found success in Hollywood—Ted is a stand-up comedian and Rebekah, a TV news anchor. BunnyLee is experiencing fame of a different sort: A denture commercial she acted in years before has become an unlikely internet phenomenon, making her instantly recognizable. She’s now being stopped on the street, handed screenplays, and accosted for selfies. Looking to lay low, she seeks shelter at the compound of aging movie star and recent viral victim Buck LeGrande, whom she met playing tennis. Buck’s years-old altercation with a famous Muppet on Sesame Street has come roaring back with a vengeance so he’s sympathetic to BunnyLee’s plight. She is wary of Buck’s reputation—“a man who was famous for being a single man”—but soon their friendship gives rise to romantic tensions and jealousies. BunnyLee decides the time to leave has arrived, and she does so—in Buck’s vintage Mustang. She hits the road with her new dog, Puddles, and eventually crosses paths with a down-on-his-luck cowboy wrestler named Austin Sway. Can the various parties find the serenity they seek in the celebrity-obsessed American West? Temple’s prose is exact and full of color, capable of both madcap humor and wistful lyricism: “Austin thought again about the lovely bartender left behind, another face in a storyline of wistful memories of what might have been....Austin blew the Eldorado’s dual-trumpet horn, sounding like one of those locomotives that opened the West and drowned out the vast, untamed loneliness.” The characters are recognizable types—particularly Chinese cook Jimmy Chan, who treads uncomfortably into trope territory—and their stories are generally low stakes. Even so, the book’s buoyant energy and swift pacing will carry readers along. There’s a telegraphed sense of how everything will end up, but that doesn’t detract too much from the lighthearted journey.
An engaging tale about celebrity, love, and the search for one’s place in the world.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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