BOOK REVIEW: Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

There are family dramas, and then there are novels that gleefully set the family on fire and roast marshmallows over the wreckage. Lost Lambs falls into the latter camp.

In Lost Lambs, author Madeline Cash delivers a debut that feels feral and controlled. Cash is a writer who knows how much chaos a story can sustain before becoming narrative couture. 

At the center is the Flynn family, who are less “lovably dysfunctional” and more “mid-collapse but still hosting dinner.” Catherine and Bud’s open marriage is on its last chops. Their daughters are each staging private rebellions with unnerving commitment. One daughter drifts toward a destructive romance. Another spirals into ideological extremity via the internet’s darker corridors. The youngest becomes fixated on conspiracies that blur the line between paranoia and pattern recognition. When a suspicious billionaire floats into town trailing scandal and promise, the family’s fractures widen into something operatic.

Cash is concentrated. She will not dilute her writing for comfort. Absurdist flourishes, surreal textures, linguistic playfulness, and an occasional textual oddity characterise her writing. What elevates Lost Lambs beyond cleverness is its pulse. Beneath the satire is a deeply observant portrait of modern anxiety. The novel understands how families fracture under political noise, how identity becomes performance online, how belief systems harden when certainty feels scarce. Cash skewers cultural absurdity but never abandons her characters to ridicule. Even at their most misguided, they are rendered with tenderness. 

There is also an incisive exploration of power. Not just financial power in the form of the billionaire catalyst, but relational power, parental power, the subtle hierarchies within marriage and siblinghood. Everyone in this novel is bargaining for relevance, affection, or control. 

The book has polarized readers, which is a sign of life. If you prefer tidy arcs and moral clarity, this will likely feel overwhelming. If you appreciate fiction that risks embarrassment in pursuit of brilliance, Lost Lambs is the one.