Emezi (The Death of Vivek Oji) unspools a web of erotic danger in their entertaining latest. Kalu, a young man in New Lagos, Nigeria, is dumped by Aima, his girlfriend of four years. That night, Kalu attends a high-priced sex party run by his friend Ahmed. There, Kalu witnesses an older man having sex with a handcuffed younger woman who appears to be a teen. Believing he is witnessing a rape, Kalu forcefully pulls the older man away, to the chagrin of Ahmed, who claims it was all consensual role play and that the man, a megachurch pastor known as Daddy O, is a good customer. As the narrative shifts focus from one member of Aima and Kalu’s wealthy world to the next, subplots, side characters, and sex scenes abound. Meanwhile, Kalu finds himself in increasing peril, as an incensed Daddy O calls for his murder. Emezi keeps the proliferating plotlines together by the power of coincidence—a crucial set of keys appears at just the right time, as does a hidden wad of cash—which gives the story both the convolution and the pleasure of a soap opera. Readers in search of a decadent good time will find it here. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, Wylie Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Finger’s affectionate and evocative sophomore novel (after The Old Place) alternates between two distinct periods in a writer’s life. In 1992, 30-year-old Artie Anderson meets a married man named Abe at Julius’, the Greenwich Village gay bar, and feels a mix of friction and attraction (“He may be a little prickly, but he makes me confident”) that turns out to be a harbinger for their fraught sexual relationship. Thirty years later, in 2022, Abe has been dead for 18 years, and his widow and pregnant daughter—whom Artie has kept in touch with—are moving to Seattle. Feeling adrift, Artie volunteers at GALS, a gay and lesbian senior center. After he has an accident and breaks his foot, he returns to GALS as a member and befriends the folks he was helping. He gets particularly chummy with Carson, a new member who offers the promise of romance and inspires Artie to write a sequel to Four Squares, the book he published about his friends when he was 30. Though the wistful digressions into Artie’s past tend to lose momentum, he makes for an endearing protagonist, one who is deeply shaped by his evolving feelings for others in his life. Admirers of Finger’s first book will love this. Agent: Kate McKean, Morhaim Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Wagner (I’m Losing You) shines with “The Met Gala,” a devilish and dizzying novella about a wealthy Hollywood family, but stumbles in “Tales of Saints and Seekers,” a curious gathering of pseudo-philosophical allegories, making for a mismatched bundle. The first entry stars the glamorous and fractured Coldstream family: divorced “chic billionairess” Corinne; her snarky queer ex-husband Dax; their older daughter Candida, 21, a struggling and suicidal actor; and their “darkly funny” trans daughter Charlie, 16, whom they named after the Revlon perfume. Charlie is obsessed with sought-after fashion designer Rick Owens, who’s creating dazzling outfits for the family’s annual Met Gala appearance, while Candida joins her friend Talula in the “Houseless Hook-Up Challenge,” in which they each have sex with a random person who’s living on the street. When Corinne accidentally hits and kills two children while driving her Rolls-Royce, the “family fixer” rushes into action. The volume’s second section is a collection of brisk Southern California–based spiritual parables adapted from Aesop, Greek Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn, and Sufi wisdom, among other sources. In them, screenwriters, actors, therapists, and other Los Angelenos are caught in wry mishaps where their inexperience, arrogance, prejudices, or spiritual deficiencies lead to opportunities for enlightenment. These vignettes, however soulful they may be, pale in comparison to the masterly satire of “The Met Gala.” It’s a mixed bag. (June)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Children’s book author Feiffer (No Go Sleep!) centers her winning adult debut on a playwright floundering amid family drama and a pressing deadline. Elise Hellman jumps at the chance to write a new play to be helmed by a popular director. Though the script is due in just 65 days, Elise, who divorced her husband, Elliot, two years earlier and raises their unmotivated and withdrawn teen son, Marsden, takes the job while contending with pressure from a friend to lose her “divorce virginity” to a handsome stranger and interruptions from her mother, Trudy. Elsie has made a habit of keeping her distance from Trudy, who taught Marsden curse words when he was in kindergarten, but it’s harder now that Trudy is showing signs of dementia. As Elsie writes her play, which is about a middle-aged woman whose bickering parents move in with her just as she reunites with a love interest from college, she processes various elements of her emotional baggage, such as lingering feelings for Elliot and Trudy’s uncertain future. Feiffer endears readers to her overextended protagonist by capturing Elise’s frustration at being unable to communicate with her family members and the relief of her eventual creative breakthrough. Those in the mood for a lighthearted story that deals with some darker family themes will appreciate this. (May)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Aubray’s fun and surprising third novel (after 2021’s The Godmothers) follows a 20-year-old American woman on the French Riviera during the birth of the Cannes Film Festival in summer 1939. Earlier in the year, Annabel Faucon faced the untimely deaths of her mother and father, from the flu and a heart attack, respectively. Her uncle JP, who manages the Grand Hôtel du Cap des Rêves, invites her to visit and offers her a job typing up scripts for F. Scott Fitzgerald, who befriends Annabel and warns her about fickle Hollywood types. Annabel also acts as a translator and tour guide for matinee idol Jack Cabot and his German actor girlfriend Téa Marlo. Annabel quickly falls for Jack, who’s trying to scout locations to make his own film. The initial two-thirds of the novel verge on frothy escapism as Annabel hobnobs with the rich and famous, who conveniently take a shine to her, but all the while Aubray has set the stage for deeper themes of exploitation, the reach of fascism, and the limits of political loyalty, as Téa is frequently courted by Nazi officials who want her to do favors for their regime and Jack schemes to make Annabel a star. Readers will be swept away. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Stephens’s dramatic dystopian debut, set in 2060, fiancées Noa and Maggie each try to find their place in another woman’s powerful wellness empire. WellCorp, the company run by tech and wellness guru Emmett Neal, provides at-home sanctuary “nests.” Now, Emmett has extended her reach with WellPods, which float in the Pacific Ocean and provide their solo passengers with two months to “regroup in unencumbered isolation and then be, effectively, reborn.” Maggie, a 25-year-old artist, was among the first to sign up for a WellPod voyage, hoping to find a way forward with Noa, a 38-year-old coder for WellCorp. The two were inseparable at first, but after Noa received a dream job at the company, they began to drift apart. Far away in the ocean, Maggie now enjoys her regimented days of AI therapy and machine-made meals, while back at WellCorp, Noa begins to doubt the integrity of the pods thanks to a damning magazine exposé, an approaching storm, and a culture of corporate secrecy. She fights to reunite with Maggie despite the pain each caused the other before Maggie’s departure. Though the ending feels contrived, Stephens deserves praise for seamlessly interweaving a chilling tech dystopia, a corporate thriller, and a rocky romance. It’s a heart-pumping ride. Agent: Claire Friedman, InkWell Management. (June)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Thorpe (The Knockout Queen) returns with a tender and offbeat story of sex work and teen parenthood. Margo, 19, gets pregnant by her college English professor, who, along with her mother, wants her to have an abortion. She has the baby anyway and struggles to keep up with rent before reaching out to her father, Jinx, a retired professional wrestler and heroin addict who wasn’t around for much of her childhood. It turns out Jinx has recently left rehab and needs a place to live, so he moves in and helps Margo take care of the baby, whom she’s named Bodhi. With Jinx watching Bodhi, Margo finds time to explore online sex work. She briefs Jinx, with whom she has a candid relationship, on her new income stream, and he reluctantly offers advice on her OnlyFans account. Margo enjoys the work and quickly gains subscribers, but her popularity brings trouble when Bodhi’s father learns what she’s up to and disapproves, leading to a fight for custody. Thorpe infuses the portrayal of Margo and Jinx’s relationship with sweetness, and she makes Margo a character to root for as the young mother learns how to support herself with help from her unconventional family. Once this gets its hooks into the reader, it doesn’t let go. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management. (June)

Correction: A previous version of this review mischaracterized Jinx’s reaction to learning about Margo’s OnlyFans account.

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Perrin (Water for Flowers) offers a lively if overwrought dual narrative involving a nursing assistant and a resident at a nursing home in rural France. Justine Neige, 21, “love[s] two things in life: music and the elderly.” Deriving great satisfaction from her work at the nursing home, she takes unpaid overtime to provide the residents with additional care. Justine is especially drawn to Helene Hel, 96, who gradually reveals the tragic story of her lover’s disappearance during WWII, which Justine diligently records in a blue notebook. Justine has her own sorrowful history: her parents, aunt, and uncle died in a mysterious car accident when she was five. As Perrin fills in the details of the women’s stories, other questions arise in the present-day timeline: who is the man Justine regularly sleeps with, whose name she doesn’t bother to learn? And who is placing calls to the relatives of unvisited nursing home residents—those “forgotten on Sunday”—falsely informing them that the residents have died? What begins as a lighthearted feel-good story becomes unwieldy and melodramatic as Justine pieces together the answers to her questions about Helene’s life, the reasons behind her family’s fatal accident, and the phone caller’s motives. This one doesn’t quite gel. (June)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Banta debuts with a sweeping if surprisingly dreary ode to the pop princesses of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Amber Young is just 10 when she’s first scouted by agent Angela Newton at a 1990 New Jersey talent show. Two years later, she signs on with Angela and they set out in pursuit of stardom, though Amber consistently feels like she’s falling short of her rivals, beginning with a disappointing appearance on Star Search. As the years pass, she puts out hit records and music videos, but she’s repeatedly compared unfavorably to her industry peers, accused of being too overtly sexual in contrast to performers with a girl next door image. Her best friend, Gwen, is one of those seemingly wholesome pop stars, but Angela knows there’s more below the surface of Gwen’s story. Their friendship gets complicated when Amber disrupts Gwen’s made-for-PR romance by sleeping with her heartthrob boyfriend. Interviews, song lyrics, and liner notes punctuate Amber’s first-person narration, which chronicles the singer’s efforts to break free of her industry-created sexpot image and start writing her own music. Although the behind-the-scenes friendship between Amber and Gwen has moments of resonance, their conflicts lack believable drama, and the romantic relationships are missing emotional credibility and genuine heat. Like much of the pop music at its center, Banta’s novel is long on style but short on depth. (June)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Chambers debuts with a poignant coming-of-age story about a Black girl growing up in a predominantly white New England town north of Boston in 1987. It’s the summer before Diamond Newberry’s junior year of high school, and she and her Irish American mother, Annabelle, have been struggling to make ends meet since her father, Robert, disappeared seven years ago, when only his shoes and wallet were found on the side of the river. Knowing Annabelle would disapprove, Diamond secretly works at a motel to save money for driver’s ed lessons. After she befriends fellow student Shelly Ostrowski, the two begin making plans to move to Florida together following graduation. Diamond’s impulse to start a new life is driven partly by her mother’s continued struggle to obtain a death certificate for Robert, which they need for the life insurance benefit, and by Annabelle’s hurtful scrutiny. While plotting to leave, Diamond also exchanges letters with her father’s cousin Clara, who raised him. From Clara, Diamond learns more about the Black side of her family, and why they left town for Canada. Tension mounts as Diamond struggles to find a way forward and her bond with Annabelle stretches to its breaking point. Adding to the story’s depth are complex characterizations and intriguing epistolary interjections from Clara. Chambers’s assured first novel sings. Agent: Julie Barer, Book Group. (June)

Reviewed on 04/05/2024 | Details & Permalink