A moving portrait of love, loss, and chosen family.
In Kogon’s novel, a photographer’s carefree life is upended by unexpected responsibility and a second chance at love.
Matthew Russell has made a name for himself as a successful sports photographer for the NFL. When Matthew unexpectedly runs into his ex-girlfriend, Monica, a brilliant, globe-trotting documentarian, he realizes he may want more than casual flings. But just as the two begin to explore rekindling their relationship, Matthew receives a life-altering phone call from a New Mexico police officer: His estranged older brother, Paul, and Paul’s wife have died by suicide, leaving behind a premature newborn daughter and a note asking Matthew to take care of her. Grappling with grief, guilt, and a terrifying lack of experience with babies, Matthew travels to New Mexico to meet his niece, Allie, and prepare for a completely new life. As Matthew navigates single fatherhood and Allie grows into a curious, sensitive child, Monica remains a constant presence in his mind. Matthew shifts careers to become a nature photographer, and a European assignment finally gives him the perfect chance to reconnect with Monica. He brings Allie along for her first international adventure, but she suddenly becomes gravely ill, and the reunion becomes another missed connection. Throughout the years, the core tension of their relationship remains: Monica can’t give up her restless, nomadic lifestyle, and Matthew can’t uproot the stable home he’s built for Allie. Ultimately, Matthew receives another piece of life-changing news that forces all three characters to confront what, and who, is most important to them. In this compelling blend of family drama and slow-burn romance, Kogon deftly explores the ever-present tensions between responsibility and desire, vividly rendering the “yo-yo existence” of two people who can’t stay apart. Each of the characters navigates sacrifices as they try to remain true to their most central beliefs, making the novel an absorbing read about the emotional ties that hold us to one another, and to ourselves.
A moving portrait of love, loss, and chosen family.Pub Date: July 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798998975011
Page Count: 334
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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