Not one of Hoffman’s best, but it may spark a desire to reread Hawthorne.
In this story of a young woman’s attempt to control her destiny, Hoffman combines a paean to reading and books—specifically one book—with time-travel fantasy.
Fifteen-year-old Mia Jacob lives unhappily in the Community, a modern-day cult in western Massachusetts, where women who fail to obey the rigid rules set by despotic leader Joel Davis must wear letters around their necks or branded on their arms. (Sound familiar?) Mia’s mother, Ivy, who came to the Community as a pregnant, runaway teen and reluctantly married Joel, now secretly encourages Mia’s small rebellions, steering her to read books, an activity Joel made Ivy abandon. Mia becomes obsessed with The Scarlet Letter after finding a first edition mysteriously inscribed “To Mia.” After Ivy’s death, Mia escapes the Community. Under the tutelage of Constance Allen and Sarah Mott, a loving couple of lesbian librarians in Concord (where Hawthorne is buried), she finishes growing up and becomes a librarian herself, although Joel continues hounding her. One day, while visiting Hawthorne’s grave, she makes a wish that she could meet the author. Poof! At its midpoint, Hoffman’s novel transforms from a relatively realistic story of female empowerment and the spiritual/psychological magic of reading into pure fantasy. Mia finds herself transported to 1837 Salem. Hawthorne, a struggling young writer whose book Twice-Told Tales has recently been a commercial flop, finds Mia asleep in the grass. She lamely announces, “I came from another time only to meet you,” and they fall rapturously in love, but the inevitable time-travel question arises: If she stays with him, will she alter history? Mia recognizes that The Scarlet Letter is her life story; if the book did not exist, would she? Hoffman makes Nathaniel dreamily appealing and creates a riveting voice for his sister Elizabeth, whose brilliance is thwarted by the times in which she lives, but Mia is more author’s puppet than character, and Hoffman’s worthy message concerning women’s rights feels repetitive and ultimately didactic. More important, the realism and fantasy never quite jibe.
Not one of Hoffman’s best, but it may spark a desire to reread Hawthorne.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781982175375
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
The lives of vividly drawn characters illuminate a lesser-known part of 20th-century history.
This engrossing historical novel focuses on the lives of three Black Americans in the aftermath of World War II.
In 1948, Ozzie Philips is a newly enlisted young soldier from Philadelphia who arrives at his station in occupied Germany just in time for the order by President Harry Truman desegregating the U.S. military. It’s inspiring news, but Ozzie will find it’s a rough transition. In 1950, Ethel Gathers is a journalist and the wife of a U.S. Army officer posted to Mannheim in occupied Germany. Unhappily childless, one day she sees a group of young biracial children tended by nuns and ends up volunteering at their orphanage. When Ethel discovers thousands of these children, born as the result of relationships between American soldiers and German women, she’s fired with purpose. In 1965 in Maryland, Sophia Clark is the ambitious teenage daughter of a hardworking farm family. When she’s unexpectedly selected for a scholarship to a fancy boarding school, she’s eager for the opportunity, if unprepared for what she’ll face as one of the first Black students to attend. The novel traces each character’s life in separate chapters, eventually revealing the connections among them. Their stories are firmly grounded in meticulous research, from the current events of each period down to details of clothing styles. Ozzie copes with the infuriating indignities imposed on “colored” soldiers despite their essential contributions, and Ethel and Sophia each learn to navigate arcane hierarchies—for Ethel, the scorekeeping of military wives and the barriers of bureaucracy, and for Sophia, the perils of boarding school. Their individual experiences are all part of the larger historical force of World War II and its influence on the Civil Rights Movement. At some points the dialogue can be stilted in its efforts to convey history, but the characters and rich details are warmly engaging.
The lives of vividly drawn characters illuminate a lesser-known part of 20th-century history.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781668069912
Page Count: 464
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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