A moving, loving reflection of innocence lost too early.
Philippe, an intelligent but confused 18-year-old, grows up quickly during what should have been a carefree summer vacation.
How could he not be confused? He’s spending the summer on the French island of Sablanceaux, and Nicolas, a melancholy, languorous friend he made just 10 days ago, has disappeared. Philippe—also the name of this slim novel’s author—is a prep school student whose family vacations each summer on Sablanceaux. This year, while he’s getting to know Marc, his summer fling, Philippe hangs out at the beach and considers how life will be different for his working-class island friends François, who’s an apprentice to his family’s butcher business, and Christophe, who works with his own father as a fisherman. Nicolas moved with his mother to the island a year ago, fleeing his violent father. Nicolas is a blond wisp of a boy, and Philippe falls for him not so much out of love but interest, an empathetic chemistry. François, the alpha of the group of friends, falls quickly for Alice, a wealthy girl also visiting for the summer—she’s Marc’s younger sister—but Alice has her heart set on the mysterious Nicolas. The disappearance of Nicolas, the most fragile of this group of teenagers, induces sudden eruptions into friendship and summer love. Written in the first person, the novel has an autofictional feel, with all the prismatic, layered filtering of lived experience we expect from the genre. Philippe is telling the story in retrospect, and he’s profoundly alert and wise as a narrator of his own past. He’s sensitive to how little he understood at the time and tender toward his friends and himself. He is still confused, though now cleareyed, about what happened that strange summer.
A moving, loving reflection of innocence lost too early.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781668204047
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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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