Timely and gripping.
In a pristine, unchanging meadowland, a select group of young people learn to be perfect wives and mothers in a post–climate-disaster society on the rebuild.
Eleanor long dreamed of attending one of the handful of idyllic state-run schools for the best and brightest. When she arrived at the Meadows as a young teen, leaving behind her (maybe more than) best friend, June, she quickly began to suspect that she’d been sent there for reasons other than her academic record. Classes taught ladylike comportment and homemaking rather than science or literature, and students were encouraged to scrub themselves of any impulses that might lead them away from the heteronormative roles “nature intended.” Now 18, Eleanor is an adjudicator, responsible for monitoring former classmates. Oakes crafts the book with strong cues from adult speculative fiction classics: Both Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale are evident inspirations. The cast represents a variety of racial, gender, and sexual identities. The timeline hops between past and present, the tension at a constant simmer and a new revelation always around the corner. The book is cogent and incisive in its remarks on our present world: Surveillance culture, reproductive coercion, and anti-queer bigotry are all heightened to their very possible conclusions. Eleanor reads white; June is biracial with a white father and a late mother who had “amber” skin and came from an island that succumbed to climate change.
Timely and gripping. (author’s note, resources) (Dystopian. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780593111482
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance.
A Connecticut girl and her best friend devise a series of plans in order to achieve their goals: following a dream and winning back an ex.
Eighteen-year-old Audrey Barbour has a Master Plan: attend Blue Ridge Glass School in North Carolina and someday turn her Etsy shop, Golightly Glass, into a thriving business. But her uber-wealthy parents insist that she instead follow in their footsteps and go to business school. So Audrey decides to go find the tuition money she needs with help from her best friend, Henry Chen. Henry needs a favor, too: He hopes that fake dating Audrey will help him win back his ex-girlfriend, and he points out to a reluctant Audrey that this could make her crush, Griffin, notice her. While Audrey’s parents vacation in France for three weeks, the pair rent out the Barbour mansion on the Long Island Sound. Soon romantic chemistry grows alongside their business partnership. Despite the pair’s great preparation and an abundance of secondary characters with connections and talents to help pull off their increasingly ambitious ideas, plans go awry, leaving Audrey and Henry scrambling and second-guessing their choices. The pacing is even, but the characters often take a back seat to the whirlwind of activity that drives the plot, with the emphasis falling on each person’s practical skills and their role in keeping the action moving over their emotional bonds. Audrey is white, and Henry’s surname cues him as Chinese American.
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593904794
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A character-focused entry that will satisfy fans.
Romantic complications between a trained killer and one of her captors drive this sequel to Watch Me (2025).
Appealing to readers who prefer their romantic dramas to be light on action and heavy on long passages of banter, bitter sibling arguments, and tortured reflections, Mafi continues the tale of Rosabelle Wolff, the flaxen-haired assassin from the dystopic Reestablishment, and magnetic, “impossibly stunning” James Anderson, her nemesis-turned-lover who’s still trying to take down the regime. Now desperate to accomplish several secret missions, Rosa easily escapes from one of The New Republic’s prisons, where she was left in the series opener, and, dressed in “a little kid’s cat onesie,” eludes all pursuers except for James, who can seemingly find her at will. Enigmatic Rosa responds unpredictably to many human contacts—including with violence, temporary death (one of her abilities), or a sudden panic attack. Along with the central pair of rivals and lovers, James’ older brother, Aaron, shares the narration. Bestseller Mafi tucks in several subplots, including, notably, a cameo from Juliette Ferrars, the protagonist of the original Shatter Me series, who’s undergoing a scarily difficult pregnancy. Amid the slowly simmering rising action, the author delivers a revelation and a twist that set up a potential series climax. Some ethnic diversity is present in the supporting cast.
A character-focused entry that will satisfy fans. (Dystopian. 14-adult)Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780063419056
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Storytide/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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