A vibrant collection of confessional, polemical verses.
Xavier fashions and refashions his idea of himself in this newest collection of poems.
The author is used to seeing himself from the outside. In this collection, Xavier places the reader within the many perspectives through which he has been viewed over the years, from that of his white-passing mother (“Then there was me / indigenous child / unwanted / brown-skinned / with freckles / … / everyone wondering where I came from / Adopted?”) (“Feo”) to those of the long-lost siblings he attempted to reconnect with in adulthood (“My siblings never responded to my message / likely after finding out I was a childless, married // homosexual”) (“50%”). Along the way, the poet considers how he must have appeared to his abusive stepfather; to the men who bought his services while he labored as a teenage sex worker; and even to himself, in the mirror, after learning in middle-age that his birth father was not Puerto Rican but Ecuadorian: “I see Ecuador and no longer Puerto Rico // I see indigenous spirits moving across the backs of Amerindian’s — / Inca’s and Taino’s splattered with the red blood / of sacrificed chickens…” (“American Redux”). Xavier’s cadence varies from poem to poem—some verses read like prose broken (or not broken) into lines, while others feature staccato clauses dense with feeling. The rhythm is always musical, and the best pieces are rich with arresting images and barbed confessions: “There were times I felt like garbage on the side of the / dance floor, watching men fall in love under disco lights” (“Vial”). Some lines, burdened with strained metaphors, fall flat: “Lights from a galaxy / could take billions of years to reach me/us/them / racism from a stranger’s milky way / only takes seconds” (“Alienated”). Even at their least effective, however, these poems, in their evocation of the queer subculture of 1970s and 1980s New York City, capture the richness of a vanished time and place through the eyes of a poet perennially in flux.
A vibrant collection of confessional, polemical verses.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781608642748
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Queer Mojo
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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