Lively, sexy, and funny, with an actual quest for meaning at its core.
The tailspin created by a bad review in the New York Times sends an author into the arms of Ayn Rand.
Filled with gleeful and often politically incorrect humor (one running joke revolves around the idea that only gay men wear Hugo Boss underwear), Freiman's sophomore effort kicks off as our narrator, Anna, is trying to recover from having her satire of the opioid epidemic labeled “classist” by the paper of record. But, as she explains in her own defense, there can be empathy in satire: “Jokes cared, just in a different way. They were a natural and necessary thinking-through-of-things. A thinking that had to go barreling straight through consensus to see what was on the other side. Even if that thing was just laughter. Just the useful acknowledgment that things were never solely good or bad; sometimes they were also, mercifully, funny.” Useful insights like this play a gonzo game of tennis with absurd and hilarious plot twists—for example, during an encounter with a group of “sexagenarian beanie babies” touring Ayn Rand's New York, Anna learns that Rand's first book was also savaged by the Times. While Anna had previously considered Rand “the gateway drug for bad husbands to quit their jobs and start online stock trading,” she now discovers that she and Alisa Rosenbaum (Rand's real name) have much in common. “In 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized her father’s pharmacy and twelve-year-old Ayn had stood by impotently, witnessing his humiliation. Here, I saw a parallel with my own father—the hard-working orthodontist—where the Bolsheviks were his two fourteen-year-old daughters, my half sisters, who mocked him relentlessly for being bourgeois and accidentally misgendering their friends.” If you like this, you’ll love Anna's move to Los Angeles to script a TV show about her new muse; her affair with a content creator she calls Big Boy, who gives her an animal avatar, Ayn Ram; her pilgrimage to a retreat center in Greece that she characterizes as “Eat Pray Love narrated by Humbert Humbert.” Or, perhaps, Ottessa Moshfegh.
Lively, sexy, and funny, with an actual quest for meaning at its core.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781646221929
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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.
