Sophie Lefens’s *Her Kind* Finds the Uneasy Heart of Motherhood in the Woods

In Sophie Lefens’s first novel, the refuge Ada finds in rural Michigan is both a comfort and a source of unease. Her Kind follows a single mother trying to build a safe life for her young son while fearing that she might not be there to protect him. Its central tension is quietly unsettling: the people and routines that make a home also give Ada more to lose.

Ada arrives at her aunt Leigh’s lakeside farmhouse with her toddler, Lenny, after her husband, Daniel, leaves. Lenny is eighteen months old, and Daniel tells Ada that caring for a family has become too much for him. The departure stirs an earlier wound. Ada’s own mother abandoned her when she was young, and Leigh gave her shelter then. Now Ada returns to that same place, leaving Chicago behind and leaning on the person who once helped raise her.

The setting carries more than nostalgia. The woods offer Ada an appealing idea: perhaps a quieter life can feel like one she chose. The novel opens with her observation that women in books often escape to the woods to make a home, have children, and find peace. Yet the retreat doesn’t settle her fear. As she puts it, “Maybe in the woods it’s easier to convince yourself that your life is what you meant it to be.” That possibility is comforting, but it also hints at the difference between shaping a life and simply hiding inside it.

A household built on care

At first, the farmhouse seems to offer the conditions Ada needs. She and Leigh share the work of raising Lenny. Their days include trips to the lake, tandem bike rides, deer in the yard, barn kittens, and visits from Peter, Ada’s former boyfriend, who is glad to spend time with them. These details give the novel its gentle pace and its sense of daily abundance. Lefens pays attention to meals, clothes, weather, and small tasks, making care feel like something practiced over and over rather than announced in grand gestures.

That steady rhythm suits a story about parenting, but it also sharpens the suspense. Ada can’t trust the calm. She believes something will go wrong, and the reader is invited to share her watchfulness even as the household’s routine offers pleasure. The effect is less a sudden turn toward conventional suspense than a persistent question: can Ada let herself enjoy a good day without preparing for its end?

Her fear takes shape in a recurring vision of being violently pulled away from the earth. Convinced she may not be around for Lenny, she asks her three closest friends to stay at the farmhouse: Joanna, a painter; Sage, a violinist; and Agnes, a seamstress. She doesn’t tell them the full reason. Ada is privately trying to work out which of them could care for her son if she disappears. The decision gives her friends a place in the family’s daily life, while turning their visit into an unspoken test of love, capability, and trust.

Leigh’s memory begins to fail, and the shared home becomes more difficult to maintain. Tension grows among the women, the refuge starts to fracture, and Ada notices that the deer are behaving strangely. Nature, which has offered a steady background to the household, becomes another thing she studies for signs of danger. Lefens builds unease through these changes in the ordinary. The novel’s atmosphere depends on how quickly a comforting pattern can begin to feel precarious.

The risk of loving someone

Abandonment shadows Ada’s choices. She grieves for Lenny, imagining the questions he may someday ask about a father who chose not to share these days. She also turns her mother’s absence over in her mind. If the people she loves can leave, and if her own presence might be temporary, how can she promise safety? Her vision gives that uncertainty a startling image, but the deeper fear is familiar: loving someone means accepting that your power to protect them has limits.

Ada says that the moments when life matches her hopes feel especially dangerous. Her description of love is neither sentimental nor dismissive: “Real love leaves you quaking, constantly looking over your shoulder, intimately aware of what could be lost.” That line captures the book’s understanding of tenderness. The fear isn’t evidence that love has failed. It comes from knowing what matters.

Leigh and Ada’s friends help her see the other side of that exposure. Care can’t erase risk, but the people around her make it possible to bear. Ada begins to understand home as a place where “what was wild and disarranged in you had a chance at finding a form.” The phrase also speaks to the novel’s structure: Ada’s life doesn’t snap into a perfect arrangement. It takes shape through shared meals, friendship, parenting, and the difficult work of admitting what she needs.

Lefens writes about motherhood without making it either a sentimental ideal or a burden that defines Ada completely. The novel recognizes the strain of holding childcare, friendship, romantic attachment, and a sense of purpose in the same life. Ada’s loneliness is sharpened by the feeling that people don’t admire her for being a mother. “No one cares about it, you know?” she tells Joanna. “About me being a mom. It’s not admired. Sometimes you just want to be admired.” The admission gives her frustration room to be more than self-pity: she wants recognition as a person as well as appreciation for what she gives.

The review’s strongest impression is of a novel that trusts quiet scenes to carry emotional weight. Lefens’s warm, descriptive prose can feel like a hearth against the colder days in the story, even as Ada’s fear keeps interrupting the comfort. The narration sometimes shifts abruptly between present and past tense. And the eerie visions may lead readers to expect a different kind of reckoning. Still, the book’s focus remains on what it means to accept help and keep loving when certainty isn’t available.

Her Kind will speak particularly to readers interested in motherhood, chosen family, and the fragile work of making a home after abandonment. Lefens offers an honest portrait of a parent who is loving and capable, yet still afraid. The refuge Ada seeks isn’t a life without danger; it’s a place where other people can help her face the vulnerability that comes with caring for Lenny.

FICTION
Her Kind
By Sophie Lefens
Mariner Books
Published October 13, 2026

The original post, Seeking Shelter in the Forest: “Her Kind” by Sophie Lefens, appeared on the Chicago Review of Books.