Clearly, the key requirement for successful beach house ownership is a (possibly illegal) sense of humor. Bring it on!
Long Island beach house update: Still ruining lives, one zoning violation and bachelorette party at a time.
"Never buy a beach house. Don't even dream about one. Don't save your money or call real estate agents or pick out a white couch. If you must do something, pray for the people who do own beach houses." Following in the fearsome footsteps of Amy Fusselman's The Means (2022), Castellano's wickedly funny debut unfurls in miserable yet gleeful detail the soul-sucking nightmare of owning a house on the Long Island oceanfront. As the novel opens, its narrator, Kathleen Deane, explains that just three years ago she was "a normal person [with] a husband, a job, and a house with no view in Kansas City." But when her husband leaves her to "find himself" on a four-month world cruise, she falls prey to a decade of Christmas letters from a childhood friend singing the praises of living in a beach town on Long Island. She purchases a 700-square-foot oyster shack, recently updated to include indoor plumbing, located in a spot so close to the waterfront that it's "practically floating." Then she drives out there, using the interstate highway system to traverse the five stages grief—denial in Missouri, anger in Illinois, etc.—ultimately becoming "the first person in history to reach acceptance on the Long Island Expressway." Arriving at her new digs, she's greeted by Rosemary, her neighbor from across the street, who draws her attention to a gigantic McMansion being built right next door to her shack. Rosemary will become her partner in a futile war against the construction of the Sugar Cube, which is steaming along with town-sanctioned exceptions to every ordinance on the books. Long and deeply hilarious emails from Kathleen to the town supervisor enumerate the outrages as they pile up, including the time the Sugar Cube's septic tank contaminates the water supply, sending her to the hospital; the illegal rental of the finished house as an Airbnb party venue; and her embroilment in an FBI money-laundering and racketeering sting. Not long after she gets settled in her new home, she takes a depression quiz from the AARP magazine: "a fun little treat!" When she reports that she's only "moderately" depressed, Rosemary comments presciently, "Well, there's still time."
Clearly, the key requirement for successful beach house ownership is a (possibly illegal) sense of humor. Bring it on!Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780593469170
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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