An offbeat and exciting story, supported by skillful writing.
In Rosenstock’s novel, a woman who feels trapped by her chosen life path fakes her own death and embraces a new identity.
After Lana Katz, who works in publishing and lives in Connecticut, unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she finds herself forced into motherhood. She loves her child, Riley (who, as a teen, identifies as nonbinary), but she feels trapped in her role as a wife and mother. In part due to her husband Adam’s frequent cheating, she desperately wants to leave her home situation. Adam refuses to agree to a divorce because of his religious upbringing and, he insists, for Riley’s benefit. With the help of an AI beta prototype named Aggi, Lana develops a plan to fake her own demise and leave her old life behind. Her loved ones are left reeling after her disappearance. Adam is uncertain that she’s really dead, so he hires a private investigator to track her down; Riley struggles with feelings of anger and enters into an ill-fated relationship; and Kim, Lana’s friend, becomes romantically involved with Adam in her absence. Meanwhile, Lana moves to California and begins identifying as Jordan, a nonbinary vegan, and grows closer to Aggi. Although Jordan is enjoying their new life, they soon find it impossible not to reach out to those they left behind. As Jordan’s old and new realities begin to merge, they also begin to unravel in a series of sudden, fast-paced plot twists. In this thoroughly creative novel, Rosenstock explores topics related to family, sexuality, agency, and artificial intelligence from the perspectives of multiple characters. The novel’s frenetic pace is supported by a fun, conversational prose style, which helps the unusual narrative to smoothly come together. (“As we reach the corner coffee shop, I see dozens of bikers huddling outside. It’s so picturesque. I could see myself selling a lot of real estate here! Walkable downtown, check. One hour commute to the city, check.”) Both the novel and its characters are unconventional, and many people will enjoy the reading experience for exactly that reason.
An offbeat and exciting story, supported by skillful writing.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 2, 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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