Book review: Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash (Doubleday, £16.99)

If the purpose of a great novel is to transport a reader into a new world, surprise them, entertain them, challenge them - then on all these fronts LOST LAMBS by Madeline Cash delivers. Since its February 2026 UK publication, it has also become an instant Sunday Times bestseller. (And it sports one of the quirkiest book jackets I’ve seen in a while.) The novel centres around the Flynn family, who live in an unnamed coastal town in America, and comprises three daughters - beautiful Abigail, middle-child Louise, and super bright Harper, along with their weed-smoking, cocktail-swilling mother, Catherine, who has announced she’d like an open marriage, and their long-suffering father Bud, a steady account and systems manager. (He’s taken to sleeping in his mini-van.) While the girls develop their own coping strategies for a family that’s falling apart - Abigail by dating an older ex-soldier, Louise by messaging a Canadian lover online, and Harper by reading Bud’s work spreadsheets and getting suspended from school - Bud is sent by work to join the ‘Lost Lambs’, a support group run by the religious Miss Winkle, and Catherine pursues a fling with her next door neighbour. It is a novel rich in character detail, and imbued with a wild sense of humour, which I enjoyed, but it wasn’t until after page 106 that I felt fully invested in the unfolding plot. And it’s a plot that cleverly opens out, encompassing conspiracy theories, mysterious anomalies at Bud’s workplace, and the machinations of the elusive billionaire Paul Alabaster, who holds secret parties at his mansion. Yet it’s also a tale of young love, mature love, and the bonds that tie families, even dysfunctional ones, together. I’m all the richer for entering the world in LOST LAMBS, so vividly imagined and by turns frivolous, funny and dark, and I confess I’ve never read anything quite like this before.

LOST LAMBS by Madeline Cash (Doubleday, £16.99)