A smart, rhythmic, and unflinching relationship tale with a strong cast.
In this novel, a trio of female friends face rising costs and the challenges of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll in mid-1990s New York City.
New York is expensive. Rent prices soar and groceries become hard to come by for three 30-something pals and their partners. The setting of the intriguing misadventures of Allie Squerciati, Rihanna Strauss, and Natia Stojanovich feels real and lived-in. Some characters share an apartment divided by a measly curtain, and others trade counterfeit money to help get through financial hardship. Yet this New York is sexy and exciting nonetheless. These heroes are plucky and entertaining. There’s Allie—this ensemble’s lead—whose narrative jump-starts the story when her boyfriend dies of a drug overdose. Her tale picks up steam as she learns to cope with her tragic loss and finds herself in the company of a new man: the energetic, chaotic rocker Izaak Sawicki, aka Pest. Allie and Pest’s relationship is messy, complicated, and compulsively readable, with a soundtrack of heavy metal and noisy punk music. At one point, Pest gives Allie a rundown of his rap sheet (“Assaulting a police officer, armed robbery…ummm, I think that’s it”), to which she confesses that she has “a thing for rabid dogs.” Much like Allie, who falls for Pest—despite his stints in juvie and jail—D’Amato extends an enormous amount of empathy to the troubled musician. Pest’s flashbacks, which often begin the chapters about this group of friends, are among the most harrowing. Meanwhile, Rihanna has a knotty, borderline toxic relationship with Dylan Gillespie, who owns a ferryboat that he rents out for parties. And Natia seems absolutely smitten—against the wills of her conservative parents—with musician Danny Benton. These intersecting narratives nicely complement one another, offering intriguing reflections on what is happening in the lives of other characters. All of this is buoyed by the author’s clear prose and dry humor—highlights of which include an excellent use of lists at the beginning of the story. Like the music that captures the attention of the characters, D’Amato’s novel is a catchy anthem of friendship and the city.
A smart, rhythmic, and unflinching relationship tale with a strong cast.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63988-290-8
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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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