The Children

For any adult reader who ever hoped to fall through a looking glass or stumble upon a lamppost in a winter wood, Melissa Albert’s adult debut is the book you have been waiting for.

The Children introduces the Sharpe siblings, who spent their youth isolated in a Vermont farmhouse, acting as the living templates for their mother’s famous portal-fantasy novels. Now adults, Guinevere makes a living shilling for her mother’s estate, while the elusive Ennis executes provocative art exhibitions, including Mother, which threatens to expose the grim reality behind their upbringing.

Albert writes with a dark, sophisticated elegance that takes the eerie charm of her YA titles and elevates it into something far more visceral. The book brilliantly deconstructs the toll of surviving a mythic childhood, balancing psychological suspense with genuine supernatural dread. Albert’s builds a setting with an enveloping, dreamlike atmosphere, where the boundary between fiction and trauma dissolves. The Children is a stunningly immersive triumph that honors the classic allure of fairy tales while bravely exposing the sharp teeth hiding beneath the magic.