Gus and Glory
by Sarah Guillory
Intermediate, Middle School    Roaring Brook    240 pp.
5/25    9781250349361    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781250349385    $10.99

One spring day, twelve-year-old Glory St. Romain comes home from school to an empty house and then answers a knock on the door. It’s her drop-in dad, a long-distance truck driver divorced from her mother, who announces that Mom is on vacation. Skeptical, Glory surreptitiously checks his phone and discovers a cryptic message from her mom: “Your turn.” Her dad sends her to stay with her maternal grandparents, whom Glory hardly knows and who have little joy in their lives. Wandering around their small Louisiana town on her own, she meets, befriends, and eventually cares for Gus, a big, sloppy, drooling bloodhound, with whom she feels an instant connection because both are “trying to fit into a space that didn’t belong to” them. With Gus at her side, she finds a new focus and a space of belonging. Guillory’s characters are all on similar journeys, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, as each changes habits and expectations. Character development here is subtle but genuine, giving readers an opportunity to predict and evaluate everyone’s paths to becoming who they want to be and seeing how they want to fit in. As in her Nowhere Better Than Here (rev. 1/23), Guillory presents a heartwarming account of finding hope in an uncertain future.

From the September/October 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.