An absorbing, nuanced coming-of-age novel.
An Irish college student grapples with the aftermath of a breakdown and her poet grandfather’s legacy.
Because the literary world can’t resist comparisons, Irish writer Ryan’s debut coming-of-age novel will inevitably be compared to the work of Sally Rooney. But there’s no need to bring Rooney into the discussion. This is an assured, absorbing first novel that follows a young woman as she begins the delicate work of finding out who she is and where she stands in relation to her history. Beth Crowe is juggling the demands of college and family, making new friends, and struggling to cope with two legacies: her own lost potential as an athlete and her Irish poet grandfather’s suicide by drowning, which happened before she was born. A competitive swimmer, Beth is recovering from a breakdown that most likely ended her Olympic dreams. She’s swimming again, learning that the discipline and repetition of an athlete’s routine are hard to shake (as are her father’s expectations). She has left the home she shares with her mother and grandmother and moved into a dorm, and her presence on the college campus has the literature department reeling. Everyone wants answers about her grandfather and his work. She begins a flirtation with Justin, an older instructor who would love access to her grandfather’s archives (her grandmother refuses all such requests). They embark on an affair, and as Beth develops her own reasons for keeping secrets about and from Justin, she discovers surprising new revelations about her grandparents and her own capacity for acceptance. Throughout the novel, water plays an important role as both balm and torment, a way for Beth to test and soothe herself, a way for her troubled grandfather to escape. But Ryan never goes too far with metaphor: This is a crisply written, empathetic novel. Ryan offers a realistic, perceptive view of the early college years, reflecting how difficult but liberating the first steps to adulthood can be.
An absorbing, nuanced coming-of-age novel.Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-323608-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.
A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.
King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears.
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780802165176
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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