A tender family story with familiar beats, elevated by strong characters and engaging prose.
Haas’ novel follows a woman as she confronts her difficult past and uncovers long-buried family secrets.
Twenty-eight-year-old writer Charlotte Sutton is drawn back to her hometown of Lakeside, Ohio, by a cryptic voicemail about her father, Chuck, a beloved local celebrity now slipping into the fog of Alzheimer’s. When she arrives, she finds her father’s newspaper and marina businesses faltering, her former classmates still simmering with old grudges, and, most shocking of all, a teenage half-brother named Adam. “Chuck could as easily have raised a baseball bat, slicing it through the air again and again to shatter her heart into pieces she’d never be able to glue back together,” she reflects as she considers the implications of a half-brother she has never known. Charlotte is, at first, determined to straighten out her father’s affairs and return to Pittsburgh as quickly as possible, but instead she stays to confront her memories, her father’s neglect, and her own bitterness. The narrative alternates between the past and present as Charlotte reconnects with estranged figures like her childhood sweetheart, Sammy, whom she abandoned. Meanwhile, the quick progression of Chuck’s illness means that Charlotte may have to stay longer than anticipated, but also that there isn’t much time to reckon with her parents’ betrayals, her responsibility regarding Adam, and the possibility of reshaping her life. Haas writes with skill and assurance, rendering the waterfront community in vivid detail and giving Charlotte’s inner conflicts emotional depth without slowing the story’s momentum. Her prose is grounded and filled with flashes of sardonic wit, like when Charlotte describes her hometown as “a step back in time—like being dropped onto an old-timey movie set.” Though some flashbacks to middle school feel tangential and unnecessary, the novel succeeds as a moving account of strained family bonds, illness, and second chances. Its themes may be familiar, but Haas’ strong character work and carefully drawn setting elevate the sweet and resonant material.
A tender family story with familiar beats, elevated by strong characters and engaging prose.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781645382386
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Ten16 Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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