Once again, Silber has served up her unique flavor of reading joy.
Silber—the great chronicler of the webs of love and coincidence that connect people—turns her attention to drugs and sex and mercy.
Again here, in her 10th work of fiction, Silber uses her signature form—interconnected stories with a rotating point-of-view—to bound through time and around the globe. The central characters are two pairs of friends, connected by a tiny moment in the emergency room of St. Vincent’s, a long-gone hospital in Greenwich Village. Ivan and Eddie were inseparable in their 1970s glory days, but part of their connection was that they were drug buddies, and this leads to Ivan making a mistake for which he can never forgive himself. Also involved was Eddie’s girlfriend Ginger, whose later glamorous trajectory projects her image into their lives for decades. The second pair is Cara and Nini, whose chapters glitter with Silberian wisdom about relationships. When Cara looks back on her wild early romantic history, she notes that “lust was a big deal in the world around [her]; people believed in sex in a way that they don’t quite anymore.” Similarly, anthropology grad student and serial monogamist Nini can’t help but wonder, “How did anyone get anything done with love in the world?” This actually becomes her field of specialization, love and courtship in a group called the Mien based in Thailand and China. The question of whether Ivan and Eddie will reconnect hangs over the book, even as the meaning and limits of mercy are explored. It can be anything from finding you have accidentally stumbled on your guesthouse in Amsterdam after wandering the city’s streets in a stupor, to the grace offered by morphine and opium to the gravely injured, to an insight gleaned during a 12-step meeting: “I’d listened to people overwhelmed by the relief of confessing, blessed by the mercy of untold secrets told.” So…does that mean they reconnect or not? What a sophisticated trick, to create this particular form of suspense and intellectual pleasure.
Once again, Silber has served up her unique flavor of reading joy.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781640097070
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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