A quiet domestic novel that soars.
Three siblings bring their families together to celebrate the first Christmas after their mother’s death.
When Helen, their strong, opinionated, bighearted mother, dies suddenly, siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin and their spouses are left unmoored by her absence. Gathering at Henry and Alice’s home in upstate New York, the family hopes to keep Helen’s traditions alive while navigating holiday stress, interpersonal drama, and the unsettled nature of their inheritance: their childhood home in Florida. The house, however, is not the only tension within the group. Henry, an artist, spends long days constructing a flock of clay birds and fretting over climate change, while Alice, a social worker, ruminates on their childless life after years of fertility treatments. Struggling with their differing opinions about ambition and parenting, Martin and Tess live in New York City with their two kids. Kate and Josh, who have found themselves on the wrong end of bad financial investments, hope to move into Helen’s house with their three children. Despite being set over just three days, Strong's book manages to distill the essences of not only the characters, but of their decades of shared history and the complicated, complex relationships among them. Above all else, the family loved Helen, and in the wake of her death, they must navigate the new dynamic and learn how to love one another again. Across town, Quinn and her daughter, Madeleine—Alice's clients—are relearning how to be a family, too, after Quinn temporarily lost custody of the girl. When Madeleine goes missing, the siblings spring into action to find her—and, in the process, begin to gain perspective about their own lives and relationships. With deft, discerning prose, Strong writes beautifully about mothers and the struggles, fears, and joys of motherhood. At one point, Kate confesses the depth of her grief to Tess: “But she’s the only person in the world who ever saw me the way she saw me, who loved me like that, who remembered me as all the things I’d ever been and also thought of me as all the things she still thought I might become.” As the novel comes to a close, Strong offers moments of connection among the family members that feel genuine and earned.
A quiet domestic novel that soars.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-313514-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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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