A woman living in a giant cowboy boot is a fairly good invitation to pick up a novel. Add a housing crisis and a mysterious keymaker and I’m more than curious. Emily Hunt Kivel’s Dwelling takes that unlikely combination surprisingly far, although I did wish it would get moving a little sooner.
Evie Cavallo is a graphic designer in New York when the city decides its renters are taking up space that could be occupied by tourists. Everyone's evicted to make way for holiday accommodation. It’s an outrageous premise, but anyone who has watched housing become an investment opportunity while people struggle to find somewhere to live will recognise the thinking behind it.
Evie has very little to fall back on. Her parents are dead, her sister Elena is institutionalised in Colorado, and her work barely supports her. She heads to Gulluck in Texas, where a distant relative works in real estate. The only affordable rental turns out to be a building shaped like a cowboy boot. Unfortunately, the people knocking on the door expect her to repair their shoes.
I enjoyed the humour in these encounters. Kivel gives the increasingly strange events a matter-of-fact delivery, allowing the ridiculousness to speak for itself. Evie's trying to settle into her new home while apparently being mistaken for the local cobbler. Eventually, she takes shoemaking classes, and the mistake begins to look rather promising.
The opening was slower than I wanted. Once Evie reaches Gulluck, the novel takes its time revealing just how far it intends to wander into fairy-tale territory. Some of that gradual unfolding works beautifully. At other points, I wanted a little more momentum, particularly when the story seemed to pause over another peculiar encounter.
Evie’s growing interest in shoemaking gave me more to hold on to. There’s something satisfying about watching her learn a skill whose usefulness she can actually see. Her graphic-design work has left her detached from what she produces, and making shoes brings her into closer contact with other people’s needs. She begins to have a clearer sense of what she can do and where she might fit.
I also appreciated that she starts out as an ordinary, slightly adrift person. She hasn’t been waiting for an opportunity to reveal herself as extraordinary. She needs somewhere to live, an income and enough stability to think beyond the next immediate problem. That makes her gradual willingness to take responsibility for her sister more convincing.
Elena’s situation gives the story an emotional weight I wanted more of. The sisters have already lost their parents, and their separation adds another layer to Evie’s displacement. Her search for a home becomes bound up with the possibility of bringing Elena into it. I would have welcomed more time with their relationship, especially as the later adventure gathers pace.
Bertie, the keymaker, is also an appealing presence, though I wanted his relationship with Evie developed further. The romance sometimes feels lightly sketched beside the attention given to Gulluck’s oddities. A few more moments between them would have helped me feel closer to the connection.
The fantasy becomes much more pronounced as the novel progresses. There are magical shoes, secretive shoemakers and an enormous fish, and Kivel allows much of it to remain unexplained. I enjoyed that freedom. The world has room for things Evie can't immediately understand, and she gradually becomes more willing to pay attention to them. But some of the shoemaker material held my interest less firmly, and contributed to the uneven pacing.
What worked best for me was the attention to how a person might build a life after their original plans have become impossible. Evie’s circumstances are often absurd, but the questions facing her are familiar. Where can she afford to live? What can she offer? Who'll help her, and who needs her help?
Dwelling earns its four stars through its imagination, dry humour and thoughtful treatment of those questions. I wanted stronger pacing and fuller development of some relationships, but I enjoyed following Evie into this peculiar town. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoy contemporary fiction with fairy-tale elements and are happy to leave a few mysteries unsolved.
🔎 Read this if you enjoy contemporary fairy tales
📚 Quirky small towns and magical happenings
💭 Belonging and finding purpose
👥 Sisterhood and unexpected connections
💞 Starting over in an unfamiliar place
⚠️ Contains bereavement, housing insecurity, mental illness and institutionalisation.
Book Details
Dwelling by Emily Hunt Kivel
Paperback ISBN
978-0374620813 — Farrar, Straus and Giroux trade paperback published in Australia on 30 September 2025.
Hardcover ISBN
978-0374616069 — Farrar, Straus and Giroux US hardcover published on 5 August 2025. Pan Macmillan Australia lists this edition for 9 December 2025.
eBook ISBN
978-0374616076 — Farrar, Straus and Giroux digital edition published on 5 August 2025.
Audiobook ISBN
978-1250401939 — Macmillan Audio unabridged digital audiobook published on 5 August 2025.
Genre
Literary Fiction; Contemporary Fiction; Speculative Fiction; Fantasy; Comic Fiction.
Subgenre
Surrealist Fiction; Fabulist Fiction; Contemporary Fairy Tale; Absurdist Fiction; Social Satire; Magical Realism. These descriptive classifications reflect the novel’s style and subject matter.
Tropes / Literary Threads
Displaced heroine; housing crisis; mass eviction; starting over; eccentric small town; unconventional home; estranged family; institutionalised sister; unexpected vocation; shoemaking; mysterious keymaker; magical shoes; secret society; sibling rescue; grief.
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux — original hardcover, Australian trade paperback and eBook.
Series
Standalone novel; no series designation is listed.
Formats Available
Trade paperback; hardcover; eBook; unabridged digital audiobook. Availability varies by country and edition.
Audiobook Narrator
Christine Lakin.
Audiobook Length
9 hours and 12 minutes — OverDrive lists the recording at 9 hours 12 minutes and 40 seconds.
Original Release Date
5 August 2025 — original US hardcover, eBook and digital audiobook.
Australian Release Date
30 September 2025 — trade paperback, as listed by Pan Macmillan Australia.
Page Count
320 pages — listed for the Australian trade paperback and original US hardcover.
Where to Buy Dwelling by Emily Hunt Kivel
📚 Amazon
Affiliate Disclosure
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I also encourage supporting Australian booksellers such as QBD Books, independent booksellers, and self-published authors whenever possible.
Danielle Robinson is a literary critic and writer whose work explores literature through the
lens of atmosphere, memory, culture, and emotional experience.
Holding a double degree in philosophy and theology, she combines academic insight with a deeply refined aesthetic sensibility shaped by more than three decades working across the creative industries as an internationally published, multi-award-winning makeup artist, fashion stylist, and interior stager.
She reads widely and rigorously, reading and reviewing more than 200 books each year as both an ARC reader and commissioned critic. Through Silk & Sentences, Danielle approaches literature as something immersive and lived with — not simply stories to consume, but works that shape the way we think, feel, and move through the world.
She writes from her semi-rural Queensland home, where she lives with Alex, her husband of 33 years, their dogs Oscar and Paige, and an ever-growing library of books.
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