An affecting, observant rendering of the immigrant experience in contemporary America.
A Nigerian family living in Florida bears deep, abiding, and distressing scars from a long-ago but devastating civil war in their native land.
The 2014 kidnapping of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls by Islamic terrorists unhinges an already tightly wound Florida attorney named Fidelis Ewerike, a Nigerian émigré and father of two who, upon hearing of the kidnapping, decides to place his 16-year-old daughter, Amara, in her bedroom under lock and key. The mass kidnapping reawakens in Fidelis the traumas he sustained as a soldier and prisoner of war in the late-1960s Biafran War, during which his younger sister, Ugochi, went missing. Amara’s uncanny resemblance to Ugochi magnifies Fidelis’ mad zeal to protect her from faraway peril. (“He believed that if his sister…could be stolen, could disappear into thin air, then the same fate could befall his daughter. Never mind that this was America, not Nigeria.”) This bizarre, inexplicable act pitches each of the other Ewerike family members into their own traumas, starting with the infuriated, bewildered Amara, who gets no explanation from her father for her imprisonment, only lots of sweets and his own elaborately cooked, dubiously fashioned meals. “Pickles don’t belong in mac and cheese,” she dolefully informs her mother, Adaobi, whose futile efforts to release Amara from captivity leave her desperately pursuing solace, even possible solutions, through her deep religious faith. Meanwhile, Amara’s 14-year-old brother, Chuk, is compelled by the tumult at home to stand alone in the face of physical and verbal abuse from other boys in the neighborhood. When a gang jumps him, Chuk is rescued by Maksym Kostyk, the 17-year-old son of an alcoholic local handyman (another emotionally damaged émigré), who offers to give him boxing lessons. Maksym meets Amara, and they find in each other’s solitude the foundations of a romance—and a mutual resolve to run away from their respective family crises. The interweaving nightmares and yearnings of these characters are evoked with empathy, tenderness, and intensely lyrical prose by Iromuanya, whose tale of abiding sorrow and its long-term consequences serves as a reminder that, as one of her characters observes, battles might end, but wars never do.
An affecting, observant rendering of the immigrant experience in contemporary America.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781643755519
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
© 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.
