A funny and thought-provoking supernatural tale with a memorable protagonist.
In this novel, a woman who speaks to angels finds herself trapped in a corporate cult.
Massage therapist Marigold Sunshine Whitaker can talk to angels. All mortals have angels, she claims—looking after them, keeping them out of trouble—but most people don’t realize it. “Let’s be real clear, though: Angels are not like these cute little baby butts flying around,” Marigold explains. “They are fierce. Like, they do not play around. And you do not want to make fun of an Angel or piss it off. Trust me.” Marigold blames her angels for landing her in prison, her punishment for assaulting a prominent local real estate agent after he tried to force her to give him a massage of a different sort. (Marigold claims the angels possessed her during the assault and then again when she threatened the judge during her trial.) When a lucky break gets her out of jail early, Marigold takes a job at the Denver Airport, hoping to save enough money to move to Ibiza. By an immense stroke of luck—or some targeted manifesting—Marigold meets and impresses Krish McKinley, the founder and CEO of the lifestyle brand Wolf&Bees. Krish invites Marigold to become his personal assistant, and it seems like a dream come true—at first. But it soon becomes clear that Krish’s company is more than a little cultlike, and even Marigold’s angels might not be influential enough to get her out of it. Clarke’s prose is sharp and funny, as here where Marigold admits the blind spots of her angelic protectors: “Angels don’t always understand everything down here on Earth. As powerful as Uriel is, he simply does not grasp the nuance of workplace dynamics or paying bills or even why you would want to heat up your Lean Cuisine in a microwave.” Marigold is a wonderfully realized creation, managing to remain sympathetic even at her most shocking and irrational moments. The book succeeds in satirizing various woo-woo aspects of modern society while inviting readers to seriously consider how and why they construct their personal belief systems.
A funny and thought-provoking supernatural tale with a memorable protagonist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-08-802133-0
Page Count: 469
Publisher: Middle Finger Press
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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