A speculative novel told in fragments peels back the surface of a small town’s reality.
Buses drive themselves, birds have disappeared, and you can’t see the stars: This spare and striking novel is what comes next.
“The Conglomerates conglomerate until all corporations become, essentially, one. The bus with no driver keeps making its loop, and the road that goes nowhere dead ends.” The faceless, soulless rhythms of an increasingly automated world shape our unnamed narrator’s daily existence, after she’s informed that the bus she drove down Route 0 can now drive itself. She has lived in the same small town her whole life, and she’s cobbled together an eccentric family: her neighbor Uri; her dead father’s twin, Luce; the triplets she carried as a surrogate and kept after the intended parents died. This life isn’t exactly what she had hoped for. She’s had many dreams: to run away from town with “The Only Person [She’s] Ever Loved,” to become a radio astronomer, to hear the skylarks again, to see the stars. But the birds disappeared a long time ago, and the sky has been blank for just as long. This is the town’s new normal as it barrels toward The Crisis, which could be one thing, or “a series of crises, a web of crises different for every single person on this Earth.” But now, a series of strange occurrences may alter the town’s rhythms forever: Our narrator’s déjà vu is getting worse, making her feel as if she’s lived entire days before; jobs are disappearing as fast as strange nests are popping up; The Demonstration, a protest between YES and NO that has been going on for as long as anyone can remember, adds a new chant; a strange legend about the town—that it was mapped onto the solar system—leads the entire populace on a hunt for the truth. After she learns her late father’s theories on reality, our narrator is left to question the only world she’s ever known. What if she reversed the bus route she’s always driven? What if she went past the road’s dead end? What if she found a way to see the stars?
A speculative novel told in fragments peels back the surface of a small town’s reality.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9781950539970
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Dzanc
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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