An often engaging and dramatic debut that will appeal to fans of romances and psychological thrillers.
Two young brothers struggle with complicated familial dynamics as they aim to take down their family’s corrupt dynasty in Scibetta’snovel.
Eighteen-year-old Theodore “Theo” Perkins and his 19-year-old sibling, Alexander (known as “Alè”), come from a British noble line. Residing in modern-day Milton, Ontario, they live in a luxurious mansion built by their father, Archibald, a mean, brutal man who often picks on Alè. The brothers despise the greed and the abuse of power that’s associated with their legacy. At one point, Alè even tries to change his surname to Dubois, his mother’s family name, but he’s forced by Archibald to abandon the idea. Alè and Archibald are always screaming at each other, and both brothers know their parents have hidden romantic relationships with other people. Theo, who’s gay, has only shared the fact of his sexual orientation with Alè and close friend Jade Lambert, and he worries about what might happen if his father ever found out. Then one night at a comedy show with Jade, he meets a young man named Wesley Summers, and the two immediately hit it off. But after tragedy strikes, will Theo be able to find happiness? Over the course of this novel, Scibetta’s skill with dialogue shines through in Theo and Wesley’s interactions. Their banter feels natural and genuine, as they share everything from their love of vinyl to inside jokes and nicknames for each other (Wesley, for instance, is very quickly the only person who calls Theo “T”). Overall, the story doesn’t follow a traditional narrative structure; instead, it’s a slice-of-life portrait of Theo’s life as he tries to balance new love and the weight of his family’s legacy. Plot points converge close to the midpoint, leaving Theo shaken and angry; the story effectively becomes one of his grappling with his feelings and with the knowledge of secrets and truths coming to light.
An often engaging and dramatic debut that will appeal to fans of romances and psychological thrillers.Pub Date: June 16, 2023
ISBN: 978-1738997534
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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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