Intelligent, impassioned, and wholly satisfying.
When a woman goes off the grid, her younger sisters’ search for her reopens old wounds and brings new insights.
The first chapter shows Olwen Flattery to be a dedicated professor of geology at the University of Galway, as nurturing of her students as she is of her partner Jasper’s two young sons. Yet when the scene shifts to her sister Maeve, a culinary star in London, Olwen has disappeared without a word to anyone. Irish author Hughes delicately establishes the characters and concerns of all four siblings before she sends them to hunt for Olwen. Maeve tangles with wealthy catering clients and her publisher over her desire to make gourmet cooking sustainable. Rhona, a high-powered political science professor at Trinity College Dublin, uses her government connections to advocate for citizens’ assemblies to end polarization and stalemate. Nell, scraping together a living from multiple adjunct positions at American colleges, can’t get tenure because she refuses to give her work “universal appeal,” focusing instead on teaching philosophy as a tool for living with more meaningful goals than success and money. Each sister is trying in her own field to halt humanity’s senseless rush toward political and ecological catastrophe; the words “alternatives” (to our wasteful ways) and “care” (for our planet and our polity) are used frequently. So when her sisters find Olwen tinkering with solar panels on a farmhouse near the Northern Ireland border, it seems her motives for leaving may be linked to their mutual concern for the planet’s future. Hughes slowly reveals the shared childhood trauma that forged the Flattery sisters’ convictions, and their resentments toward each other. Her moving, richly detailed portraits of their personal struggles give emotional depth to Hughes’ underlying theme: when we stop caring—for ourselves, each other, and the world—disaster will surely follow.
Intelligent, impassioned, and wholly satisfying.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593545003
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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