My Big Fat Greek Coming-of-Age Novel, narrated by one of the great teenage curmudgeons of recent literature.
In mid-1970s London, a young woman talks to her posters of Marc Bolan and David Bowie about her plans to murder her father.
Kadis’ delightfully original debut novel is narrated by mordant misfit Constance Costa, aka “The Half Greek Imprisoned Daughter of The Fat Murderer.” Her father has earned his moniker by virtue of a car accident that killed Connie’s mother and two younger brothers. Now the two remaining family members are stuck with each other, all the more miserably since George Costa uses violent punishment to control his daughter’s behavior. As she confides to the poster of Marc Bolan on her bedroom wall, “The Autumn Term Disco is one week away. I just want to be there, like a normal [almost] fifteen-year-old…and that unreasonable lunatic won’t let me.” She receives a reply: “Hm, I’d say being a lunatic and being unreasonable tend to go hand in hand”—but this, Connie fumes, “wasn’t Marc. It’s bloody David Bowie. David could be snitty and obscure and couldn’t resist sticking his beak into everyone else’s business.” While the Fat Murderer prevents her from attending the disco, he requires weekly attendance at Friday night community gatherings known as Greek Night (aka Freak Night), the only upside of which is that she gets “to see the one person in [her] life who didn’t make [her] want to vomit.” Vasos Petrides is an almond-eyed dreamboat who “had shown [her] his penis for the first time when [they] were seven”; the pair continues to explore the possibilities of romance. There’s also Auntie Roulla, who is not only aware of the Fat Murderer’s abuse but also suspects an even more horrible secret. There hasn’t been a novel this funny that contains an abuse plot since early Edward St. Aubyn, who’s a contemporary of Kadis, debuting in her 60s after a career in music journalism. She certainly hasn’t lost her grip on what it’s like to be 15: The way she keeps the darkest parts of the book burning hot behind Connie’s jokes, lists, nicknames, and wisecracks is both creatively daring and perfectly evocative of the melodramatic emotional shitshow that is adolescence.
My Big Fat Greek Coming-of-Age Novel, narrated by one of the great teenage curmudgeons of recent literature.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9798217153794
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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