The Children by Melissa Albert
Published by William Morrow & Company
Publication date: June 2, 2026
Genres: Fiction, Childhood, Horror, Mystery 
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In her new novel, The Children author Melissa Albert goes with the familiar theme of life as the child of a celebrity and pushes it even harder. Edith is a writer who gained her fame and fortune by writing a series of children’s fantasy books, using her own children’s names and even their likenesses. Ennis and Guin had no escape from the adulation and curiosity she created without their knowledge or consent. Scrutiny that only intensified after Edith died before writing the final book in the series, when Guin was 11. In the present day, Guin has just published her memoir detailing what her childhood was like. She has spent her life as the gatekeeper of her mother’s memory, but hasn’t spoken to her brother Ennis in decades.
Albert builds tension into The Children from the beginning. Some of it comes from the present, but a large portion occurs as the novel moves to the past and the unusual childhood Guin and Ennis shared. They spent most of it living in an isolated old farmhouse in the Vermont woods that Edith inherited. It’s here that she begins to write while her children are left to explore, play in the woods, have their own adventures. It seems idyllic until it all goes up in flames.
From the opening paragraph everything and everyone in The Children is cast into doubt. This is a novel of motion, skidding between unreliable narrators, unpleasant characters, and an environment that although described as bucolic, warm, and welcoming by visitors is not so pleasant for the children. Guin has locked doors in her mind, numerous personas that she puts on and takes off with the ease of make-up. She’s shifty, eliciting sympathy that curdles into frustration a paragraph later while Edith is a shadowy presence who shifts between malevolence and vulnerability. And Ennis, the elusive artist? He’s been estranged from his sister for decades, leaving only cryptic breadcrumbs in the form of art installation pieces to give the bewildered Guin any idea of where he is and what happened to them the final fateful night at the family’s farmhouse.
By the halfway point I still had no idea where this story was going, but it was exciting. There were multiple mysteries that were either going to turn supernatural or psychotic and Albert kept dropping hints that were often as much misdirection as they were clues. It kept me completely engaged, helped by prose that’s quietly foreboding even when describing what seems to be pleasant and innocuous. It felt natural up until the last quarter of the book, but by then I was in so deep I glossed over the excessive descriptors. Finally, there was the reveal, but even that kept revealing, until the point where it got too convoluted. What was organic felt like it was being pushed and pulled into shape. Despite trying too hard by the end, The Children was still nonstop reading I couldn’t put down.
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