A quietly engaging tale with a fine cast that will surely leave readers craving a sequel.
A teenager with mysteriously absent parents lands in a facility teeming with secrets in Beckett’s series-starting dystopian novel.
The novel begins with 15-year-old Lijah coming home to an empty townhouse. His mother has apparently stepped out, and his truck-driver father, who’s been away for work, should have returned days ago. Peace Force officers suddenly show up and drive Lijah to a massive building called Linderhaven. As he checks in, he finds that both his and his mother’s names are wrong on the paperwork; Mother Ruth, who runs the facility, says that he can only stay if he keeps his real name a secret. Lijah soon settles in, despite initial reluctance, thanks to such kindhearted people as his new roommate, Sion Ostler, and the resident gardener, Naomi Wilde. He finds that there’s a lot of mysterious goings-on at Linderhaven; there’s a “special school” attended by “pretty girls,” for instance, and the facility’s sketchy governor appears to have no real power. Lijah contemplates escape, but he also wants to know why he was brought there in the first place—and to find out, he’ll have to stick around. Beckett’s narrative thrives on mystery: Ruth and at least some of the other Sisters who run Linderhaven clearly know important information, andthey’re keeping Lijah in the dark. Myriad characters and subplots abound, often involving the governor and another figure who may be even worse than him. Overall, the story provides minimal details about the greater society in which Lijah lives—a region that’s evidently governed by a “centralized, aristocratic system.” But the supporting, predominantly female cast is consistently intriguing, including skilled pianist Melissa and Sister Patience, who notable lacks patience; most of these characters outshine Lijah, though he remains sympathetic throughout. The author’s pithy descriptions and sharp dialogue keep the story popping, although readers may decipher the clues faster than the eponymous teen does. Ultimately, this opening installment is a fine introduction to a planned series, as any of these sublime characters could easily take the narrative reins.
A quietly engaging tale with a fine cast that will surely leave readers craving a sequel.Pub Date: tomorrow
ISBN: 979-8995891406
Page Count: 303
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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