A busy but wonderful example of generous escapism and a book to be recommended.
Sibley’s novel welcomes readers to small-town Texas with a tale featuring a strange but entertaining passel of characters.
Marty Pennebaker has left her life in Manhattan and come back to her family’s sprawling ranch, Los Abuelos, south of San Antonio. Her father, Pete, hopes that she’ll get married and take over the place; her only other sibling, Tom, died of complications from AIDS more than a year ago. Thanks to the ranch, with its oil and gas and good grazing, the Pennebakers are inexhaustibly wealthy, and they amount to laid-back nobility in tiny Rita Blanca, Texas. Marty has a purely sexual relationship with local Pettus Lyndecker, a member of a poor family that’s just scraping by, but for Pettus, lust is turning into love, which complicates matters. Soon, Chito Sosa, Tom’s Mexican widower, arrives in town with money to fulfill Tom’s hope of making a difference in the decaying town. Other characters include twins Darcy and Delilah Lyndecker, Pettus’ sisters, and their failing flower shop; their archenemy is upstart florist Carol Ann Jansky. Another subplot involves Syrian refugee Adnan Hakim and his young daughter, Haya, who are discovered hiding on the ranch; they try to avoid deportation with other characters’ help. Sibley is an experienced novelist and playwright and a native Texan. Plot is his strong point, although readers will often find it easy to guess the next twist. However, he clearly loves his kooky characters and looks after them as only an affectionate puppeteer can: Is someone having a crisis in their life? Perhaps a marriage will help—or perhaps a sudden monetary windfall. Is a change of heart needed? If so, Sibley will look into that, too—even if that is a bit more of a challenge. Some may object to such relentless conjuring of happiness, but other readers will relish it.
A busy but wonderful example of generous escapism and a book to be recommended.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
