A novel that combines romance and suspense in an unexpected but credible way.
In Crapo’s debut novel, two therapists fall for each other in Paris and meet with hostility—and maybe something more sinister—after they return home.
Romantic sparks fly when the male psychologist Carson Arrowsmith and the female psychiatrist Morgan Alar meet through friends in Paris. They continue their affair after they return to the U.S., but seemingly random developments impede it: a psychologist named Gloria’s near-fanatical envy of Carson’s relationship with Morgan; the sudden appearance of an old friend of Morgan’s long-missing father; and a strange man who makes an evening appointment with Morgan and asks personal questions instead of answering them. These events spiral into violence that endangers the couple in a story that, despite its mystery/thriller elements, works best as a romance. Crapo defines the main characters convincingly and treats their professions realistically, if sometimes with tongue in cheek; the couple psychoanalyzes everything and diagnoses Gloria’s meddling personality before Morgan decides, “I don’t like her.” Their relationship unfolds naturally and believably, particularly in a scene of buoyant anticipation, when Carson patiently waits for Morgan at a cafe, though she’s nearly 30 minutes late. They refer often to their Paris liaison, even in the name of their practice. If the story’s antagonistic forces arrive at a crawl, the measured pace remains effective. Tensions rise as Morgan’s history emerges, and Omar, her father’s former acquaintance, turns out to have a link both to the bizarre patient who made an appointment with her and to a man who’s a stranger to both doctors—“Mister X.” The more romantic interludes give way to Morgan’s making the “rounds,” ensuring each night that the house is secure and the alarm is set. But the relationship keeps its feet planted in the foreground, and the story becomes one of a couple struggling to maintain harmony. The ending, for a romance, is atypical, but it succeeds and rounds out a solid book.
A novel that combines romance and suspense in an unexpected but credible way.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466245242
Page Count: 366
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2012
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
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