A candid portrait of athletes’ endurance and women’s friendships.
Six young women, competitive cross-country runners, strain to keep their lives on track.
On a Massachusetts college campus in 1992, there are no cheerleaders for the women’s cross-country team. The student-athletes have each other, and they are classic teammates: yoked frenemies and diehard loyalists. A collective narrator takes inventory of the top six: “Chloe is the fastest, and Kristin is the prettiest, and Liv has a boyfriend, and Harriet is the smartest, the most ambitious, and Patricia sees through the bullshit, and Danielle cares the most. She is the most responsible.” (Harriet is also a lesbian, and her subplot is worthy of its own book.) All crave food—unsurprising since the coaches do regular weigh-ins—and both disordered eating and binge-drinking plague the team. Reents focuses on the characters’ personal and athletic pain, so we don’t know much about their classes or career plans. But the runners, who are sharp and clever, take spirited positions on sexual politics, slippery language, Anita Hill, and Andrea Dworkin. Over scenic practice runs and social breaks, subsets of the six try to solve each other’s problems, with mixed results. Given this tight focus, we rarely glimpse coaches, parents, professors, or non-jock friends. Team captain Danielle is mostly on her own as she tries to steer her teammates toward top performance, good moods, and low drama. Of course, she too is a college student with pressures, and carries her own regrets. The story is told in three parts, two during the season and one as a flashback to Kristin’s previous summer in Boise, where she worked as a barista and met a suspiciously charming man in his late 20s. Here, Reents’ writing ramps up, and the stakes are high. Her descriptions of the Idaho landscape are bewitching, and the dialogue is rivetingly strange. A cross-country veteran herself, Reents brings suspense and precision to the running scenes, putting the reader in the center of the action. The novel’s resolution is anticlimactic, but the heroism of women with a common cause, in a world of men who think they know best, makes for a moving narrative.
A candid portrait of athletes’ endurance and women’s friendships.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9780593448069
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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 dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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