Spirited and inclusive, this is a fresh take on the coming-of-age tale.
An aspiring young fashionista leaves Idaho in pursuit of her dream in this graphic novel.
Blanca has just graduated from high school, but her controlling mother already has her whole future mapped out for her. This plan starts with business school and does not end with Blanca working as a fashion designer, which is what she wants for herself. So, while her mom’s out of town at a real estate conference, Blanca runs away and heads to…New York, of course. She quickly discovers that New York is a tough town—especially for someone who’s not a fast walker by nature—but she gets a break when a guy at a coffee shop notices her sketching. Soon, she’s living in a brownstone full of men, most of them gay and most nurturing dreams as big as Blanca’s. Emile is saving up for cooking school. Evan has a plan for revitalizing the bar where he performs as Thai Dishes. Andy just wants to figure out who he is. Brady hopes to make it as a photographer—and to hook up with the house’s one bona fide success, a model named Nic. Meanwhile, Blanca’s mother is searching for her. And our heroine’s realization that her new boyfriend might not be who—or what—he says he is adds a note of drama. Anslow’s artwork is fun, and there’s a one-page panel set in the American Museum of Natural History that is absolutely terrific. Aguirre’s colors are as vibrant as the imagery is dynamic. The writing is lively, and it’s nice to see that the authors didn’t feel the need to translate the Spanish; instead, they let context and pictures help those who don’t know the language. And if there’s a special award for inventing drag queen names, Blas and Newton deserve it for “Salvador Dalí Parton.”
Spirited and inclusive, this is a fresh take on the coming-of-age tale.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9781637154540
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Oni Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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