Review by Booklist Review
Typically, a novel's thirtysomething female protagonist struggles and overcomes obstacles to find her fairy-tale ending. Not so for debut-novelist Evans' Sheila: a character so frustrating that she's deplorable and somehow simultaneously lovable. A depressed, obsessive insomniac who has no filter and loses track of the days, Sheila is entrenched in her cluttered apartment and unable to hold a temp job. She has, in fact, given up on most things until she has her grandmother's secret letters. They totally consume her as she surrounds herself with them, literally and figuratively, reading, rereading, and searching for answers. Evans gets inside every nook and cranny of Sheila's head, and it's hard to look away from, like driving by a train wreck. Socially awkward to the core, Shelia and her fellow characters are emotionally detached from each other but not from readers, who will be fully drawn into Evans' world and eventually rooting for Sheila, too. With its touch of mystery, this refreshingly realistic and quirky novel is hard to put down.--Norstedt, Melissa Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Evans's offbeat and winning debut is a family mystery, a much-delayed bildungsroman, and the story of a surprisingly touching friendship between a 35-year-old woman and her 12-year-old neighbor, whose father she happens to be sleeping with. Sheila's life is stagnant: she hasn't held down a job, not even a temp job, in three years; she's obsessed with a UPS carrier and the love letter he accidentally dropped in front of her; she constantly gets nosebleeds; and her father left her and her mother when she was 11, an abandonment she hasn't gotten over. Sheila's daddy issues are plentiful and garden-variety, but her emotional arc and eventual reconciliation with her mother shine. When Sheila's grandmother dies, Sheila finds among her belongings a shoebox containing letters from a man named Harold, who is not her grandfather and yet professes his love for Sheila's grandmother with increasing ardor. This discovery coincides with Sheila meeting Torrey, the 12-year-old daughter of Sheila's neighbor Vinnie, who has just lost her mom in a skydiving accident. Torrey, who becomes obsessed with the letters and also becomes something of a fairy godmother to Sheila, urges her to find Harold, pushing Sheila to her eventual, reluctant transformation. Torrey is a little too clever, but it's impossible not to be charmed by her and Sheila's relationship. Agent: Monika Woods, Curtis Brown. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A box of love letters leads to an unlikely friendship between a socially awkward woman and a grief-stricken girl.Sheila, the protagonist of Evans' debut novel, appears to be at an all-time low. At 35, she keeps leaving her temp jobs. She sleeps strange hours and spends most of her time in the shared concrete courtyard outside her apartment where she hears everything her neighbor Vinnie does. On top of this, her grandmother has just died. Sheila is not a conventionally likable character, but her incredible oddness makes her interesting. She has a knack for off-putting responses and laughing at precisely the wrong times. When she learns that Vinnie's ex-wife has been in a terrible accident, she asks him for the details. "I'm just a sucker for the gore," she says. Eventually, this accident brings Vinnie's 12-year-old daughter, Torrey, to live with him. Soon, Sheila is getting to know her neighbors as people. She shows Torrey a box of love letters written to her grandmother, letters Sheila did not know existed until her grandmother's death. The two become obsessed with the letters and the man who wrote them. The friendship that develops between Torrey and Sheila gives the book its real heart. Torrey matches Sheila's extreme immaturity with her own wisdom, and their bond feels unexpected and fresh. The characters are stronger than the plot, however, which unfolds predictably. The letters themselves--which have such a powerful hold over Sheila and Torrey--are overly sentimental and melodramatic. Perhaps this is the point, but so many of them are included it begins to drag the book down. And Evans includes a few narrative elements that feel gimmicky and don't quite land.Memorable characters are the bright spots in a forgettable plot.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
