An engaging tale about a gay stowaway on British navy ships during wartime.
A young Scottish man sneaks aboard a World War II transport ship in this debut gay erotic novel.
February 1940. The son of a shipbuilder’s agent, young Oliver Turner experienced his sexual awakening at the Glasgow shipyard in the arms of the men laboring to build the RMS Queen Elizabeth. It’s only appropriate then that he should stow away on the completed ocean liner as a means of escaping his dreary existence in Glasgow for a life of high adventure. He’s caught almost immediately, but luckily the man who discovers him, Senior First Officer Robert Bell, is willing to stay silent in exchange for making Ollie his shipboard plaything—a desirable amenity on a long voyage. But Ollie soon learns that the ship’s maiden voyage will not be ferrying passengers across the Atlantic. Now that war has begun, the Queen Elizabeth has been commandeered to transport British troops to foreign battlefields, dodging U-boats and the Luftwaffe along the way. The resourceful stowaway doesn’t keep to one ship but finds himself serving across a fleet’s worth of vessels, picking up lovers along the way. Ollie quickly discovers that life aboard a ship during wartime is no picnic—even when there are plenty of willing sailors to share a bunk with. Brennan’s prose is dense and wry, filled with colorful comparisons between ship parts and sailors’ anatomies: “His success with securing the roughest of men meant he had honed a skill for knowing—to draw from his shipyard wanderings—which of the men rendered hard through the toughest of ship-building tasks would want to rivet his hole soft.” The writing may prove a bit ornate for some readers, and there is some confusion at times as to which character is being referenced in the litany of he’s and him’s. Even so, fans of gay stories at sea should enjoy this immersive and period-specific picaresque, which manages to capture its milieu in a way that feels simultaneously timeless and contemporary.
An engaging tale about a gay stowaway on British navy ships during wartime.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2022
ISBN: 9780645555301
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hard Crossing Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
A charming love story that absolutely radiates warmth.
A single mom winds up fake dating an incredibly wealthy man in her hometown.
Dolly Brick is back in her hometown of Whitfield, Rhode Island, for the summer to help her dad and disabled brother manage their house and family business. As a 39-year-old single mother with multiple jobs—which now include working at the Brick Fish House—Dolly is always busy. When her mom left their family years ago, Dolly took over caring for her siblings and father and never really stopped. When she runs into Stewart Whitfield after making a shrimp delivery to his family’s mansion, she doesn’t think they could be more different. She’s had to figure out how to do everything by herself, and he can’t even change a tire. That’s why Stewart’s proposal that she pretend to be his girlfriend feels so unbelievable—but it comes with a hefty check that she desperately needs for home repairs. So she becomes the fake girlfriend of Stewart Whitfield (as in, the Whitfields her town is named after; his real fiancée just dumped him and it’s a bad time for him to be single) and experiences what it’s like to walk into fancy buildings through the front door instead of the service entrance. More than the boats and helicopter and expensive dinners, though, Dolly is impressed by what a kind man Stewart is—and how it feels to let someone else take care of her for a change. Soon, their relationship starts to feel more real than fake. Monaghan creates an impossibly winning story with a charming, lovable heroine. Dolly is capable, hardworking, and will do anything for the people she loves. She and Stewart both possess real flaws, and while their relationship begins with one of the most beloved rom-com tropes, their challenges feel like realistic adult obstacles rather than easily solved miscommunications. It’s also refreshing that, even though Dolly must learn to allow other people to help her, she never views her caretaking responsibilities as burdens. She deeply loves her family, and that love carries through the entire story.
A charming love story that absolutely radiates warmth.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9780593853979
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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