This enjoyable Yuletide tale deserves a place under many a Christmas tree.
The latest addition to the author’s Noel Collection is chock-full of holiday spirit.
Noel Book is a New York City book editor who’s named after her birthday. She flies to Salt Lake City to visit her estranged father, Robert Book, before he dies of cancer and stay with him until his passing. Sadly, he dies hours before her arrival. “He tried to hold on for you,” her father’s friend says. “His last words were ‘Tell Noel I’m sorry.’ ” She desperately wants to return to New York, but then she's fired from her job while still in Utah. Meanwhile, she inherits Dad’s beloved bookstore and $1 million of life insurance along with his house and everything in it, “including all his personal belongings, which includes his automobile, his Lladró and rare book collection.” Now “he’d created roots to keep me here. Roots or chains?” She is an angry woman who thinks God (if such there be) hates her. She’d rejected her father’s love after her mother's death in a car accident years earlier, and in “the last two months I’d lost my marriage, my apartment, my father, and now my job.” Next, she breaks off a budding romantic relationship and alienates Dad’s devoted friends. “You spread pain everywhere you go,” she’s told. In a word, she’s being a jerk. Luckily, Dad’s love was unconditional. He’d had a thriving business, a life surrounded by the books he loved, and friends who loved him deeply. In his final days, he wants his daughter to be happy. Throughout the story, she receives a series of wisdom-filled anonymous letters, handwritten in feminine script and signed “Tabula Rasa.” Who could be sending them? The reader will guess, but Noel guesses wrong. There’s a Dickensian arc that will make readers break out the eggnog and Christmas cookies. It evokes Tiny Tim’s exhortation: “God bless us, every one.”
This enjoyable Yuletide tale deserves a place under many a Christmas tree.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2960-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
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