APRIL MAY JUNE JULY

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.