Come for the murder mystery, stay for the lyrical passages on love and loss.
Siblings try to figure out whether or not their father committed murder—but the real mystery lies in that man’s broken sense of self.
Jane Leigh—whose late husband, John Lo, was acquitted of killing a colleague at the law firm where he was a partner—is dying of cancer. When her children, Hunter, a reporter, and Brennan, an attorney, re-engage with each other during Jane’s final days, brother and sister realize they disagree on their father’s guilt. Their decision to try to solve this stone-cold case soon disrupts their schedules and psyches, and readers will find their sleuthing sound, if a little serendipitous, such as when an old family friend gives them access to confidential files. However, the best and most haunting writing in lawyer Suthammanont’s debut concerns John Lo himself, a first-generation Chinese American whose parents came from the region of Teochew culture. John recalls that his father expressed satisfaction (“pride was an overstatement”) with him only twice, when he graduated from college and when he got into law school: “John knew that was because it meant that his life would be better than his father’s.” His father gave John a springboard for success, but also the titular hollow spaces in his makeup—areas of dissatisfaction and longing that John unfortunately fills with alcohol, then with an affair with gorgeous associate Jessica DeSalvo, whose murder shatters his life. Chapters alternate between Then (before and after the murder) and Now (when Hunter and Brennan join forces), and while this is surely meant to destabilize readers, it also puts into stark relief how separate the experiences of an outsider parent can be from those of their multiracial children. While John Lo dealt with macro- and microaggressions from people in most areas of his life, Hunter and Brennan move through the same New York City world without friction, yet saddened and confused by their father’s deeds. It’s an intriguing, if ultimately slightly muddy, combination of sleuthing and character study from a talented writer.
Come for the murder mystery, stay for the lyrical passages on love and loss.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9781640097117
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
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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