Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash features a thrilling and absurd story, while also bringing up some problematic questions about the author’s view on certain religions.
Warning: this review contains mild spoilers
On January 13, 2026, Madeline Cash’s debut novel Lost Lambs was published. As usual, I received the book about a week early due to the book subscription service I use, Book of the Month.
The book mostly focuses on the Flynn family, where the two heads of household, Catherine and Bud, are struggling with their new marital “arrangement,” a sly cover for an open marriage. In response, their three daughters, Harper, Louise and Abigail, all rebel in unique ways. Harper, the youngest, is incredibly clever and incorrigible, and gets suspended three or so times throughout the course of the novel. Louise, the neglected middle child, takes said neglect as a freedom and develops an online romantic relationship with chatter yourstruly, a pious Muslim who convinces her to convert to Islam. The oldest, Abigail, gets mixed up with the town magnate whom many believe is conniving Epstein-adjacent scandals.
Cash’s writing is very witty. I loved the quirks that she kept going throughout the novel, like spelling any word that had “nat” as “gnat” — for example, “donation” becoming “dognation” — to never let the reader forget a gnat problem present in the town’s church. At least, until the church is fumigated and the gnats die both in the church and the text.
I also adored the depiction of the rebellious and snarky daughters, especially the youngest, Harper, who has some of the cheekiest remarks, like in a conversation with her father:
“‘I just paid a woman two hundred dollars to tell me that you’re understimulated.’
‘We could have gotten forty-four scoops for that price,’ said Harper without taking any time to calculate.”
Harper is extremely intelligent and hungry for knowledge, despite only being a young teenager, which sends her on many quests to learn more about the world. She starts with learning Latin, then later digs into her father’s work spreadsheets that hold information on the shipments that come through the town’s harbor. As she meticulously combs through the data, she finds some redacted information about shipping containers, which causes her to spiral into conspiracy about the millionaire who runs the town.
What this conspiracy ends up being is much more tame (yet still weird) than I expected — especially knowing of real-life disgraces pertaining to certain individuals in power. Knowing what people with too much power, money and free time will do, I was scared I would turn the last page feeling thoroughly nauseated and traumatized, yet I wasn’t. It was still gross, but nothing like the horrors of reality. The resolution of the novel was — thankfully — satisfying and heartwarming, and the descriptions of the millionaire’s actions are not intensely graphic, so I wouldn’t let the fear of encountering traumatizing text hinder a potential reader.
The development of the characters was mostly fleshed out, and while not all of them come to the wisest conclusions in the end, they were still somewhat realistic. I can’t say the same for the plot, which was incredulous and a little absurd, but I also can’t say that it wasn’t entertaining. Those who enjoy the weird, random, bordering on not realistically possible would delight in this read.
“Gnaturally,” I was quite overwhelmed with the many subplots that were progressing. The majority of the book focuses on each of the three daughters and their parents, but I counted about 10 different character perspectives throughout.
Though the writing was clever and the plot deliciously absurd, I couldn’t turn a blind eye to some more problematic aspects. For example, Cash seemed to elevate Christianity while simultaneously stereotyping Islam. This is evident when Bud, the father, finds solace from his decaying marriage in the Christian faith when he joins the support group, “Lost Lambs,” which begins his growing character development, thus “saving” him. However, this new connection causes him to neglect the care of his daughters, which the daughters all take advantage of to partake in their mischief.
Highlighting Christianity as a way to repair one’s life on its own isn’t necessarily malicious, but the weighting of it against other religions is. Particularly, Cash decided to depict Islam in an offensively obvious stereotype. For example, Louise’s online chat boyfriend (again, who is explicitly described as Muslim) starts to help her plan a terrorist attack. This plot point was very distasteful and I kept hoping there would be a twist that would save this character from this stereotype, but there never was. There’s no redemption for the author either, as she does not include any other Muslim characters to balance out this stereotype. While reading and through my reflections afterward, I tried to think if this could’ve somehow been satire. Maybe she was calling out that stereotype as problematic by presenting it, but there’s no inclination of this in the text, and the way this subplot plays out was too abrupt and obvious for me to think that it could be anything other than genuine and offensive.
Digging herself further into this hole, Cash makes the happy ending that Louise gets a relationship with a Jewish boy. She depicts this through the new boy describing aspects of his religion that are more appealing to Louise than Islam. The comparison between two religions, especially with having Louise end up with the Jewish boy, whom Cash depicts as the “better” of the two, seemed offensive and a bit hateful. I didn’t like her use of the two religions having to be in competition, when they could’ve just coexisted within the book without friction or making it the “deciding factor” of sorts.
In the following scene, Louise meets Caleb’s “bubbe,” who explains Judaism to her:
“Bubbe talked about the hardship of the Jews. Persecution. Mosaic law. Pogroms. Modern antisemitism. Bubbe talked about heaven. A resting place for the souls. It was not gated. Anyone could go. She pointed at Louise, like even you. Her nails were pristine.”
Given current world events and the political climate, these were not wise decisions on Cash’s part. It definitely, once again, favors one religion over another — particularly pitting two religions against each other when there is already so much tension surrounding them in our current world. Especially in regard to the genocide in Gaza, which is a conflict between two states where two separate religions largely dominate the culture and cause enough tension as is.
While the book could be making an attempt to be satirical with its religious depictions, I couldn’t identify it. In any case, there should be an assiduousness that the author takes to not go so far into the satire that it ends up being genuinely problematic. Avoiding stereotyping of any kind would be ideal, but if an author is going to use a stereotype as a literary device, it should be with empathy and precision, as to avoid spreading hateful rhetoric. And if the goal is to spread hateful rhetoric, it’s time for them to rethink their perspective and shape it into a kinder one.
The writing was extremely witty and skilled, but it is still crucial to hold a critical eye to the messages current media is trying to send us.
My initial reaction was to give this four stars for the writing alone, but given these controversies, I’ll have to downgrade Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash to three stars.
Header Image by Eva Goddard. Fourteen Cents Banner by Alex Carrasquillo.
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