An intermittently engaging beach read that’s arriving just in time for the sunny season.
In Ogletree’s debut novel, a prominent Savannah woman sets out to find love and acceptance from the Graydons, a family as Old South as it gets.
Merritt Sanders, a colleague’s plus-one at a Savannah Labor Day celebration hosted by the Graydons, catches the eye (and soon the heart) of the eldest Graydon son, Sumner. But it’s immediately clear that the widowed matriarch, the imperious Mary-Carlton Graydon, is not thrilled. Mary-Carlton is not overtly hostile, just cool toward this older woman who has stolen her first born, although she accepted the wives of his three younger brothers. Sumner is undeterred, eventually chiding his mother to address “Ms. Sanders” as “Merritt,” which she grudgingly does. Sumner and Merritt marry and are truly in love, a love that survives a heartbreaking attempt at adoption, then ends with Sumner’s untimely death in a plane crash. A second very promising romance ends badly, and then Mary-Carlton suffers a debilitating stroke. Merritt now proves her love and her mettle, becoming the stricken woman’s champion—along with Mary-Carlton’s posse of lively biddies and the irrepressible restaurateur Floriana. The stroke also brings out the worst in her sons, especially the greedy Griffin, who wants to hustle Mary-Carlton off to a nursing home and sell the very valuable property. But Mary-Carlton dies at peace in her own bed, and the climax of the book is a wonderfully classic reading of the will, which is a dramatic, ugly showdown between good and evil. At this point, readers will more or less know which side is going to win (which is hardly a knock). Ogletree is a Savannah native who certainly knows how to evoke a vivid sense of place. His novel is something of an ode to the fascinating city of Savannah itself and to a certain class of old-money gentry. The Graydons’ wealth and social standing would intimidate most mere mortals. But Merritt quickly earns readers’ respect in the way she stands up to Mary-Carlton and lets us understand that the most intimidating and blustering among us still need love and forgiveness.
An intermittently engaging beach read that’s arriving just in time for the sunny season.Pub Date: April 23, 2026
ISBN: 9798995420057
Page Count: 536
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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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