An engaging summer read, full of wit, charm, and drama.
In Cullen’s novel, three women summering in the Hamptons find their idyllic vacations to be more complicated than they’d bargained for.
In chapters told from alternating perspectives, readers come to know Megan and Courtney, two recent college graduates fleeing the fallout from their respective romantic relationships, and Nora, a newly divorced, self-made millionaire who’s reeling from the recent sale of her company. The three start off as strangers and are slowly drawn into one another’s orbits, making an unlikely but amiable trio. For much of the novel, the details of the relationships that drove Megan to accept an invitation from her former stepmother to stay in her Westhampton Beach guesthouse, and Courtney to stay with college acquaintance Alyssa, are unclear, but this mystery creates a deliciously intriguing atmosphere against the posh backdrop. Courtney finds herself increasingly alienated from Alyssa and her posse; unlike the artsy, subdued young woman she knew at school, Alyssa now cares only for partying and drugs (“I’m increasingly aware that ‘Summer Alyssa’ isn’t quite who I bargained for”). Then, Alyssa’s true focus on Courtney’s ex-boyfriend become clear. Soon enough, both Megan’s and Courtney’s relationships catch up with them, resulting in a loosely strung love triangle, malicious lies, and miscommunications. Nora’s chapters, while less immediately gripping, slowly reveal a heartwarming story as she fumbles to repair the friendships she’s neglected, strike up a relationship via a matchmaking service, and connect with her summer housemate. Cullen, the author of The Last Summer Sister (2021) enlivens a classic beach-read plot with a quick wit, a knack for drawing complicated family relationships, and contemporary flair. Each of the three main characters is fully drawn and warm; despite their flaws, readers will root for them. Alyssa is a compelling antagonist, but one wishes for more scenes with her. Supporting players are less well defined, though; bartender Tucker disappears halfway through the novel, and boyfriends exist only peripherally. However, the book’s representation of neurodivergent characters and queer relationships is well crafted and refreshing.
An engaging summer read, full of wit, charm, and drama.Pub Date: March 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-28058-5
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Lime Street Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
