A compelling yarn with fresh characters and classic literary themes.
In Becker’s novel, a group of estranged friends uneasily reunites in their small Maine hometown.
In Augusta, Maine, high school students Billy and Dustin are the best of friends. Both standouts on the football team, they’re popular and are slated to earn university scholarships to Division 1 football programs. That is, until Billy sustains a freak injury—or what seems like a freak injury—at practice, fracturing his tibia and ending his football dreams. Tragically, the player who injured Billy is none other than Dustin. The boys’ friendship never recovers, and when they break up with their respective girlfriends—Billy with Jessica, whom he never gets over—the members of their friend group officially go their separate ways. Dustin leaves to play football at Baylor, and Jessica heads to New York to pursue her studies. While his friends flourish in their adult lives, Billy languishes in Augusta and earns a reputation as a nice guy with a bad drinking problem, someone the locals feel bad for but don’t want to meet outside the bar at the end of a long night. (“He would have taken a drink from any of the water bottles decorating the coffee table, something to sweep away the cotton in his mouth, but his stomach flipped at the thought. It didn’t sympathize with what had become an all-too-familiar condition. Hangovers are the sentences of trials lost the night before, his boss at the quarry liked to say”). When Billy discovers that Jessica has returned home to be with her terminally ill mother, he can’t help but pine for—and pester Jessica with—his hopes of reconciliation. But Jessica isn’t the only one back home, as Billy’s old pal Dustin has also reemerged. After Jessica finds a drunken Dustin passed out on the side of the road, it seems a romance may spark between her and Dustin instead. Billy doesn’t learn any of this until Andrea—another old friend who is now an intrepid investigative journalist—tells him. She happens to know that Dustin never finished college, and the reason why is disturbing (even if it’s not as shocking to Billy as one might hope). And Dustin isn’t the only one hiding something—a secret of Jessica’s has followed her to Maine, too.
Readers who enjoy small-town dramas will find no shortage of interpersonal intrigue here, as each of Becker’s characters is adept at keeping secrets from one another. The relationships feel real—the friendships are as authentic as the romances, and some of the novel’s best moments occur during the interplay between Billy and Andrea. Moments of larger social observation abound, as well: “When people were allowed to vote with their dollars, they inevitably voted for their own annihilation.” The elements readers expect from an idyllic, small-town setting are all at play, including the local diner, the struggling hometown paper, and the deep wounds from barely-forgotten high school legacies. These combine in a novel that feels both familiar and fresh, comforting and challenging. As Billy navigates his own disappointments and watches as his friends’ disappointments slowly float to the surface, readers will ponder the question of whether we can ever truly leave our origins behind. A compelling yarn with fresh characters and classic literary themes.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798988881643
Page Count: 345
Publisher: Copywrite, Ink
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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
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