A big-hearted consideration of gentrification and the erosion of time.
In Green’s satirical novel, a colorful Atlanta journalist covers a chaotic summer in his embattled neighborhood.
Archie Johnson is not God, though people call him that. The nickname has to do with his flowing silvery mane, long white beard, unplaceable ethnicity, and big personality. The freelance journalist writes primarily for the Atlanta Beacon, but he’s obliged to take any work he can find to keep his ancient home from falling apart. God inherited the Queen Anne–style house from his racist white grandfather, who allowed the property to fall into ruin after fleeing for the suburbs decades ago. That the house sits in the heart of the now predominantly Black neighborhood of Sweetberry Park is just a happy irony. God—a light-skinned man with one-quarter Nigerian ancestry—sees himself as both scribe and protector of Sweetberry Park, a role that has renewed his life’s purpose following the long-ago tragic death of his wife and young son. God has his work cut out for him in the summer of 2018 as the neighborhood is beset not only by a new project from millionaire developer Lawrence “Lotto” Livingston, but also by a literal plague of snakes—the 17 deadliest species available at the nearby zoo, released into the neighborhood by a deranged zookeeper. With the help of a former blues singer with deep roots in the neighborhood, can God save some of Atlanta’s history—and his own—from getting erased? Green’s voice-forward prose, as narrated by God, is inflected with enthusiasm and regret for what Atlanta was, is, and will become. He bemoans sitting in traffic on the “fifty-lane freeway monster of perpetual immobility, our city’s source of constant constipation,” remembering when he was a boy, when they “laughed at its unbridled fattening and the notion that people from exotic places like Jersey City, Portland, and Topeka would ever consider migrating to our baby metropolis.” Atlanta residents will get the most out of this hyperlocalized story, but the issues Green’s tale touches upon—housing, race, migration, grief, and the changing face of cities—are familiar all over.
A big-hearted consideration of gentrification and the erosion of time.Pub Date: March 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781958861523
Page Count: 364
Publisher: The Sager Group LLC
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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