by Jeff Zentner ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 2024
An emotional meditation on coming home to yourself.
A down-on-his-luck musician returns to his hometown after the death of his best friend.
Colton Gentry should be riding high. His latest single is lighting up country radio, he’s opening for superstar Brant Lucas, and he’s married to one of the biggest singers in the business, Maisy Martin. But his best friend, Duane Arnett, has just been killed in a mass shooting at a country music festival in Tampa, and Colton is struggling through a fog of grief, unsuccessfully drowning his sorrows in alcohol, and dealing with the fallout of an interview he gave calling for gun control. Drunk on stage one night, Colton angrily responds to gun rights hecklers in front of thousands of conservative country fans. He’s dropped from the tour and his record label, and his marriage to Maisy implodes. Now back in his hometown of Venice, Kentucky, Colton resigns himself to life as a has-been. But when he runs into his high school sweetheart, Luann Lawler, a chef working in town, she offers him a job and another chance at life—and love. Shifting among Colton’s three acts—the high school football phenom of rural Kentucky, the honey-voiced country singer in Nashville, and the preternaturally gifted farm-to-table sous chef—sometimes feels like too many disparate strings are being played, especially when subplots about grief, divorce, second-chance romance, substance abuse, and celebrity all get stage time. Readers expecting the novel to focus heavily on Colton crusading for gun control may be disappointed, as the catalyst for his return to Kentucky falls mostly to the wayside once he gets there. But with a deft hand and lush, descriptive writing, the author manages to weave it all together into a yarn worthy of a classic country record.
An emotional meditation on coming home to yourself.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781538756652
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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by V.E. Schwab ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 10, 2025
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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by V.E. Schwab ; illustrated by Manuel Šumberac
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PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
by Fredrik Backman ; translated by Neil Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2025
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
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by Fredrik Backman translated by Neil Smith
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by Fredrik Backman ; translated by Neil Smith
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