An earnest instructional story that’s brought down by unengaging prose.
In Deshpande’s business parable, the CEO of a recently acquired company struggles to satisfy the expectations of the new owners and begrudgingly seeks help from an executive coach.
Jack Shorn is elated when he is promoted to chief executive of Accelx Services, a provider of outsourced accounting services, after the company is bought by Gold Private Equity. The new owners, though, have aggressive expectations—not just in terms of revenue targets, but also regarding the penetration of new verticals and the addition of new strategic accounts. After 15 months on the job, Jack’s team is showing little progress for their considerable efforts, and the partners at Gold Private Equity are beginning to lose patience. Their confidence in Jack’s leadership is waning, as well, as he appears unwilling to take any action to rectify the situation. Finally, the owners issue an austere ultimatum: Jack has 90 days to show he’s making headway, or his future at Accelx may be in jeopardy. Renata Campbell, one of the new owners’ managing partners, compels Jack to consult an executive coach named Meg Beecham. Jack is reluctant, as he feels that he has no time to waste on a practice that’s unlikely to bear fruit. Meg, though, quickly gets him to see that his team is way out of alignment, and that his leadership style is at least partly to blame. Deshpande delivers an intelligently conceived story that astutely captures the pressures of being a high-level business executive. It also makes a powerful case for the effectiveness of executive coaching. However, as a drama, the story feels tedious and didactic, and the prose can be stilted at times, as when Jack frets about the underperformance of Brett, his chief revenue officer: “If Brett can’t even close one strategic sale himself, how does he expect his team to meet the challenge? He just can’t seem to get there as a leader. Maybe it’s time for a change.” Such overly expository text feels condescending to the reader, who may wish that Deshpande had simply written a more straightforward nonfiction account.
An earnest instructional story that’s brought down by unengaging prose.Pub Date: June 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781647049409
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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