A scintillating modern love story that will leave a lasting impression.
In Pitsirilos’ novel, a young woman navigates love and loss in a near-future world.
As an intelligence assistant who analyzes sexual behaviors across New York City, Alita Melusine knows that love is an afterthought in the modern age. Yet she can’t help but yearn for an all-consuming love of her own, and she thinks she’s finally found it with Kaveh Shamez—that is, until she meets his mother, Claire, whose immediate disapproval and possessiveness strain their relationship. As tensions rise between Claire and Alita, however, Kaveh refuses to intervene, leading the younger woman to ruminate on the well-intentioned (though often misguided) advice she’d so often relied on from her late friend, Jean. Still reeling from Jean’s sudden death, she reflects on memories of sailing through the Greek islands together with him, all the while wondering what he would say of her current situation. Meanwhile, the narrative slowly reveals Claire’s perspective through interspersed snippets that reveal a complex psyche, shaped by a preoccupation with comic books and disappointment over the rejection of her astrophysics thesis, among other unhealed wounds: “My thesis was rejected on account of my theory of Venus’s alien civilization. My father…blamed the comic books as fueling such fantasy.” At the novel’s core is a meditation on how to love like Venus: For Alita, it is a desire to be idolized, and, for Claire, a volatile response to suppressed pain that she struggles to conceal. Pitsirilos has crafted a compelling exploration of what it means to be human, weaving together themes of artificial intelligence, environmental degradation, mother-son relationships, and the difficulty of modern love. Although the narrative can feel momentarily disorienting at first, its structure clarifies as it unfolds, moving fluidly between timelines and perspectives in a way that will ultimately reward engaged readers. Alita and Claire, in particular, stand out as fully realized characters with richly imagined backstories and psyches to guide their emotional arcs. The vivid prose further immerses readers in Alita’s story as she describes a heavily polluted Aegean Sea or Claire’s haunting personification of Venus.
A scintillating modern love story that will leave a lasting impression.Pub Date: March 2, 2026
ISBN: 9781958077115
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Janus Point Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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