A sequel that whets your appetite for another taste of life in West Mills.
A triple murder shocks a small North Carolina town into confronting its deepest fears and darker secrets lingering in the wake of the civil rights era.
Winslow follows up his widely praised debut, In West Mills (2019), by returning to the eponymous Southern locale of that multilayered romance with a murder mystery set in the mid-1970s. The story begins shortly after the bullet-riddled bodies of Dr. Marian Harmon, her sister, Marva, and brother, Lazarus, are discovered at the foot of the staircase of their home in the predominantly Black western section of West Mills. As readers of the earlier novel will recall, the hamlet is divided along racial lines by a small canal, and even after Jim Crow’s demise, the scars of racial segregation remain deep and raw. The town’s sheriff’s department regards their first homicide in decades as little more than a drug-related break-in, even after they interrogate, then release, the siblings’ half brother, Olympus “Lymp” Seymore, who was first suspected because of an argument he’d had with the three Harmons. Arrested or not, Lymp nonetheless walks around town with a taint of suspicion. And this deeply distresses Josephine Wright, a middle-aged native daughter of West Mills who has returned home after a 48-year stint in New York City to make a new life for herself with her childhood friend Lymp. Jo decides to remove any doubts about Lymp’s innocence by wandering around town asking who else might have a motive for murder. Is it Eunice Loving, who had taken her son La’Roy to Dr. Harmon to “have the gay removed” but was later horrified by the doctor’s violent methods? Is it Ted Temple, the town’s most prominent White real estate mogul, who was landlord for the Harmons’ home and, until a bitter dispute separated them, Marian’s secret lover? Or could it have been Ted’s daughter, Savannah, who more than a decade before had been ostracized by her father and exiled from the predominantly White part of town because she’d fallen in love with a Black man? Or could it have been Lymp after all? Jo isn’t sure of anything, but she proves a relentless and incisive sleuth, not just in pursuit of what happened, but in untangling the complex social dynamics within the seemingly bucolic rural Carolina hamlet. Though not as intricately woven as Winslow’s first novel, this tale comes across as considerably more than a regional whodunit because of its author’s humane and sensitive perceptions toward his characters, even those who may not deserve such equanimity.
A sequel that whets your appetite for another taste of life in West Mills.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-63557-532-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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