Deeply and surprisingly moving.
If you could undo one moment in your life, what would it be?
For Lauren Novak, a 37-year-old accountant in West Hollywood, California, that question isn’t an ice breaker to ask at a party, but an essential part of her being. Because Lauren—along with her mother, Marcella, and grandmother Sylvia—received something special at birth: a silver ticket that would allow her to undo a single event. And while some might see this as a gift from the universe, Lauren views it as a millstone around her neck: “The world is full of tragedy. There are fires that kill thousands of people, guns that kill hundreds at a clip. I could stop it, maybe. Travel there, capture the ember, point out the backpack. I could help. Every day, every year, there are things I could undo…” When Lauren’s husband, Leo, goes to New York for a summer job opportunity, Lauren moves in with her parents and grandmother in Malibu. As Lauren, who is working through the trauma she feels after multiple failed fertility attempts, makes a series of questionable decisions involving her ex-boyfriend Stone, the silver ticket begins to look more and more appealing. But Lauren has felt the effects of the ticket her entire life: When she was a teenager, her father, Dave, died in a car crash, and Marcella used hers to bring him back. Marcella has spent the ensuing years being overprotective of her husband, to the detriment, Lauren feels, of her relationship with her daughter. Lauren has to decide whether to follow the naturally rocky course of her life or take back her mistakes. The book is at its best as Serle combs through the messy relationships among the three generations of women. Her strength as a storyteller becomes clear about halfway through the book as the tone shifts from magical rom-com to poignant reflection on the price of a person’s decisions, and how far someone will go to save the ones they love.
Deeply and surprisingly moving.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781668025918
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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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