Review by Booklist Review
Hart's follow-up to her 2022 debut, The Work Wife, is set in 2014 and centers around the four Barber siblings, whose relationships with each other have been strained since their father Frank was kidnapped in Iraq in 2004. A decade later, Frank's adult children are struggling. The eldest, April, seeks comfort and excitement outside of her marriage. May, their father's favorite, has moved back home and is floundering. June found love with a soccer teammate but has turned to alcohol for solace. July, the youngest and the only boy, grapples with an unrequited crush on his college roommate and a new attraction to a former high-school frenemey. When April takes a trip to Dubrovnik with her mother, she spots a man she is certain is her father, forcing the siblings back into each other's orbits as their hope that he's alive is revived. But this also leads each to face the effects the loss of him has had on their lives. A compelling, engaging look at a family falling apart and coming back together.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Hart (The Work Wife) spins a wrenching story of unsettled familial grief. Siblings April, May, June (who has renamed herself Juniper), and July believe their civilian contractor father, Frank, was killed by his kidnappers in 2004 Iraq. While April is traveling in Croatia with their mother, Nancy, she thinks she sees her father alive and well in the coastal city of Dubrovnik. Old wounds are reopened after the family members hear the news, and they each reckon with how his absence has fractured their lives. Juniper is preparing to marry her longtime love Hana, a Syrian American woman, and trying to disguise her dependence on alcohol; July is struggling with his unrequited love for his friend Lucas; and April, seemingly the perfect wife and mother, is cheating on her husband Ross with an edgy boyfriend who's into the kind of kinky sex she's been looking for. Hart's taut plotting keeps readers guessing about Frank's fate until the end of the novel, which finds the siblings reunited in Iraq. Supporting cast members, especially Frank's translator Tariq, illuminate America's missteps in the Middle East. This will move readers. Agent: Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Union Literary. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Four adult siblings deal with the fallout of their father's kidnapping in Iraq 10 years earlier. Hart follows her successful debut, The Work Wife (2019), with another socially and politically engaged novel, this one less deft in managing its large cast and plethora of back- and side-stories. April, May, June, and July Barber--three sisters and a brother--and their mom, Nancy, have seen their wounded family fracture to the point that, as the book opens, none of the others makes it to an engagement party thrown for Junie and her wife-to-be. Lawyer April is busy cheating on her husband, zookeeper May has reconnected with an old love, soccer coach Junie is drinking all day, and July is struggling with a crush on his straight college roommate. Their mom is in the best shape of the bunch, though she's hiding her relationship with a local dentist because she's supposed to be the martyred wife of #FreeFrankBarber, taken by terrorists while working for a chemical weapons contractor in Iraq in 2004. Then she and her oldest child, April, take a trip to Dubrovnik, during which April sees her father on the street but cannot catch up to him. So...that's a lot. Keeping the characters and complications straight is too much work; trips to the Middle East feel dropped in and full of history lessons, touristy descriptions, and late-breaking new characters; and ultimately the many issues the book takes on start to make the whole thing feel more earnest than fun. Hart will doubtless write better books than this one. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
