An endearing and fascinating perspective on a uniquely volatile and dangerous childhood.
In Wallack’s novel, a brother and sister survive a shocking upbringing of drugs, cults, and neglect.
In 1979, Sienna (CeeCee) and Siddharta (Siddhi) Jones are 6 and 5 years old, respectively, living with their father, Jackson, in Miami—more specifically, in Xanadu. That’s the name of their house where Jackson sells drugs, leads a sex cult, and rants about the Bhagavad Gita. With their mother dead from an overdose (and their grandmother and aunt proving to be equally disappointing parental figures), they fend for themselves, watching, year after year, as different “Babies” (Jackson’s term for his sex-addicted followers-turned-drug-mules) come and go from Xanadu. They try in vain to get themselves adopted by a traditional family and even forge papers to enroll in the local elementary school, but all their efforts are in vain as Jackson’s drug-dealing cult only grows in size and ambition, slowly devouring the children’s innocence in the process. As the 1980s draw to a close and the siblings reach high school age, the author moves from CeeCee’s first-person narration to a shifting perspective as the adolescents come to terms with their strange, toxic father and begin to wonder how they could possibly move forward in the world without him. Manic walks through hurricanes, deadly overdoses, and even sexual assault are all parts of these children’s brutal world, but Wallack cleverly walks a tightrope in her writing, balancing the horrors with a child’s unwavering imagination and naïve sense of wonder (moments in which CeeCee instinctively shepherds Siddhi away from orgies are at once shocking, tender, and comical). The book’s latter half feels more aimless, unsure of where its characters should be heading, but CeeCee’s perspective remains surprising and engaging. It’s through her that the author develops a distinctive and emotionally rich voice delivering succinct observations as devastating as any of the horrible events themselves, such as her simple summary of how she felt others saw her family and Xanadu: “We were degenerate aliens. No matter what or where.”
An endearing and fascinating perspective on a uniquely volatile and dangerous childhood.Pub Date: March 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798892125710
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
