A bold and beautifully written examination of a mother’s love told through the eyes of Cinderella’s “wicked” stepmother.
Twice widowed and struggling to maintain the decaying manor house she and her daughters are trapped in, Lady Etheldreda Verity Isolde Tremaine Bramley does everything in her power to obtain an invitation to a royal ball that could change their lives forever.
After the death of her second husband, Ethel finds herself without any money, in charge of a rapidly crumbling house and its staff, and struggling to look after her daughters, Rosamund and Mathilde, and their self-righteous, stick-in-the-mud stepsister, Elin (aka Cinderella). It’s a challenge, to say the least. Ethel clings desperately to the image of a proper and well-to-do lady while doing whatever she can—including hunting in the woods with her peregrine falcon, Lucy—in order to protect her family and make ends meet. When word reaches her of an upcoming royal ball that could lead to a highly coveted engagement to the prince, she becomes determined to help her daughters earn an invitation, only to have Elin be invited instead. As time passes and the engagement unfolds quickly, Ethel comes to realize that Prince Charming and the royal family are not all they’re chalked up to be, and that she must choose between the life she’s sought for years and the well-being of a stepdaughter who’s never loved her. Ethel is so much more than the cartoonishly villainous Wicked Stepmother that fans of Cinderella have come to know over the years. Instead, Hochhauser has created a desperate and prideful woman who would do anything in her power to ensure that her daughters have an easier life than she’s had. Readers will no doubt find themselves rooting for Ethel as she recounts the life she once had, the love she’s lost, and her unwavering devotion to her daughters.
A bold and beautifully written examination of a mother’s love told through the eyes of Cinderella’s “wicked” stepmother.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781250396341
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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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