Measured, witty, captivating tales starring a series of resilient, likable female characters.
A short-story collection plumbs the depths of girlhood, life, and suburban survival.
Hosey channels the lives of young women across the expanse of 10 tales that are alternatingly titillating, shocking, harrowing, poignant, and compelling. In the opener, “Christine,” two suburban adolescent girls befriend and then start parenting a toddler they meet at a playground, which begins as a fun project but becomes too serious when they escalate their efforts to care for the child on their own. The title story is striking and clever as it depicts two girls, both in love with the same abusive, cheating video store clerk, who agree to participate in the man’s robbery scheme but wind up bonding in other ways instead. Elsewhere, a nun’s fall from grace in “Blessed Virgin” comes as a blessing when she realizes she can finally be the queer woman she feels she is inside without consequences or judgment. Plenty of phallic humor permeates the comical and family-centric “Not For Everyone,” one of the volume’s longest tales. Hosey has a firm grasp of the minor details that give readers a fully illuminated image of the characters she depicts and the nostalgic era, mostly the 1980s and ’90s, in which they live. Preteen girls, “both summer-brown overlaid with pink sunburn on their shoulders and cheeks,” chew grape gum and gossip about the TV series Dynasty; others use pay phones, star-69 one another, and obsess over the musician Dave Matthews. A calm, comforting man becomes the equivalent of “human Xanax” for a needy woman in one story. The author’s knack for characterization is keenly realized throughout these tales with remarkably descriptive flair. The Walden Pond tour guide in “Land Mammals,” about a downtrodden college teacher who is enlivened by a Thoreau impersonator, is described as a “sickly-looking older woman who probably believes that old lie about how it is impossible to be too thin.” There’s also a refreshing range of locales, from the wintry setting of suburban Wisconsin to the leafy, wooded historical community of Concord, Massachusetts. Every story in Hosey’s distinguished, engrossing collection is memorable, suffused with meaning and emotion, with characters exhibiting the grace and wisdom of age or the testiness of youth. This is splendidly entertaining reading, particularly for fans of women’s fiction.
Measured, witty, captivating tales starring a series of resilient, likable female characters.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9783988320407
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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