Review: Her Kind - Sophie Lefens

Genre: Literary Fiction

Published: Mariner Books, October 2026

My Rating: 4.5/5 stars

"Isn’t it wisdom, not weakness that allows a person to bend reality in order to survive?"

The Story

When Ada is left to raise her 3-year-old son by herself, she retreats to her aunt’s crumbling lakeside home to seek stability for Lenny and herself. Lately she’s been haunted by vivid dreams of being pulled away from the Earth, fearing them to be a premonition of her own impending death. Inspired by this sense of dread, Ada invites her three best friends to the lake-house with an unusual goal: to figure out which one of them would be best suited to take care of Lenny in the case that she’s unable to do so.

What begins as a weekend among friends turns into a gorgeous story of trust after tragedy, chosen family and belonging.

What I Loved:

It came as no surprise to me to learn that Sophie Lefens started as a poet before writing her fiction debut. I absolutely loved Her Kind on a sentence-by-sentence basis. It’s on this micro-scale where the novel truly comes to life. I marked so many stunning quotes that – by themselves – captured images and feelings so well that I wanted to memorize them. Lefens also does a fantastic job of making the cadence, imagery and atmosphere of her writing match the tone she is creating. There’s a dreamlike quality and flow to this book; an almost Edenic haze that is undercut by a slight sense of mistrust and uncanniness, that perfectly mirrors Ada’s state of mind.

I’m using the word Edenic intentionally here, as there’s a lot of biblical (specifically garden-of-Eden) imagery buried here. Without spoiling anything; there’s the frequent descriptions of Leigh’s lavender-scented garden, there are many scenes involving fruits and seeds (specifically pomegranates) and a reoccurring presence of an unseen snake in the garden. To me, such a motif could easily become overbearing, but in this case, I felt it beautifully underlined the specific fears and state of mind that our protagonist is in.

Slight spoilers as to my interpretation of the core themes here, but I feel the need to mention it, as it’s an emotional state that I don’t often see represented in books, and still deeply related to here.

Motherhood and friendship central to the story, but underlining it all is a deeper layer. Ada is a woman who’s life has been shaped by loss and leaving. Between her parents, her husband and the deteriorating health of her aunt Leigh, she has learned that the things she treasures will eventually leave her. Whatever joy she experiences, she knows that Paradise is a temporary state, and she’s always on the verge of being cast out by the next tragedy. This is what makes her recurring dreams, her constant sense of dread and her suspicion of the state of comfort and happiness she finds herself in now so relatable and tragic.

This theme of distrusting a good thing as a result of a series of losses, is explored through different characters approaches and truly resonated with me, making this reading experience extra special to me. Can you remain present in something good, even knowing that it’s finite, or is some amount of self-deception needed to endure this prospect? Her Kind made me ponder these questions in a way that I hadn’t before, and will haunt me with its lack of answers.

What I didn't love:

I started with the statement that I loved this novel on a sentence-by-sentence-level. That didn’t always translate to the larger scope of the novel. There’s very little substantial plot, which, in combination with the dreamlike writing, gives the reader very little to grab hold of. In a sense that adds to the transcendental and ethereal atmosphere, but I personally felt like a little more grounding (for example through the characters) was needed to make this novel stick. In its current form, due to the lack of plot, you will either latch onto the thematic questions this can easily become a forgettable read, unless you specifically resonate with the theme the way I did right at this moment. That makes the audience for this novel quite niche.

For the record: I can completely see the irony in me criticizing a book for being potentially “forgettable”, when the impermanence and transcendental nature of life and beauty are among its central themes. For me, this was very much the right book at the right time, and perhaps that’s enough.

Quote to remember:

"The stories people tell are so often about leaving. Stories about answering the call of the unknown, foraging away into the open sea and thereby becoming stronger and truer. Is this how a person becomes a better one? And if so, have I failed?

Maybe these are stories for people who feel they are born on land, rooted and sheltered. People who’ve grown weary of their roofs and walls and now must go. But what about those of us who feel they were born at sea? What about those of us who’ve spent their lives looking for shore. If you’ve lived your life with a daily ache for home, isn’t it enough to find it? Make it your own, to stay?"

You can find this book here on Goodreads.