Abbott is the queen of charged atmospheres, where a restrained surface often hides a torrent of deception.
Three sisters suffering from Detroit’s auto industry collapse are drawn to a shiny new business opportunity that turns sinister.
Abbott’s latest opens with a sense of foreboding—a feeling synonymous with Abbott and one that only grows as the hardships of three suburban Detroit women come to light. The Bishop sisters—Debra, Pam, and Harper—are resilient, but they rely on one another after the collapse of the auto industry creates a trickle-down effect of loss in their family. First, their father loses his job and dies not long after. Pam marries rich and loses it all in a divorce. Debra, the eldest, loses her strong facade as the stress of medical debt from her husband’s cancer wears her down. And Harper feels her sense of control unraveling as a secret debt bears down on her and threatens to dismantle her relationships. When Pam’s son leaves for college—“Somehow, Pam had gotten him out”—she feels proud but unmoored. How will she pay for tuition? Harper is very aware of Pam’s struggles, so when she returns from a short-term job in another town and finds her sister beaming from the front seat of a new car, things don’t add up. Pam tells Harper about the Wheel, a group of women helping women. Harper at first sees the Wheel as the pyramid scheme it is, but when she shares her concerns with Debra, she finds Debra is also drinking the wine-spiked Kool-Aid. Unwilling to tell her sisters the grim nature of her debts—“Secrets came naturally to her. She’d kept them all her life”—Harper soon finds herself deep in the Wheel, recruiting other desperate women with the allure of sisterhood and fortune. “Money isn’t about money. It’s about security, freedom, independence, a promise of wholeness.” Before long, the champagne bubbles start to pop, and Pam, the most popular woman of the Wheel, starts to feel the pressure, and with it, some very warranted paranoia. Harper outlines her sister’s downfall in a detached tone that reads as coming from a place of authentic trauma—she remembers the small details, her observations methodical—but it causes the mounting pressure to fizzle out with an impression of inevitability.
Abbott is the queen of charged atmospheres, where a restrained surface often hides a torrent of deception.Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780593084960
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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