Review: "Limelight" by Andrew Keenan-Bolger

Limelight by Andrew Keenan-Bolger
Published February 2026 via Penguin Workshop
★★★★

Danny dreams of something more. Life is better than it was—there's less money, but now that he and his mother are out from under his father's thumb, there's more room to breathe. But Danny has bigger dreams...and a chance at a performing arts school in Manhattan seems like maybe, maybe a way to make those dreams come true.

This book is a love letter: to New York of the 90s, to found family, to teenagers coming out and figuring themselves out. In Manhattan, Danny is a fish out of water—his Staten Island roots run deep—but he learns, and the people he meets are also willing to learn, and gradually his world grows bigger and brighter.

There's a bit of an element of magical realism here, and usually I'm not keen on that, but it worked really well in Limelight—a combination of the voice of the narration (which sometimes zooms out a bit) and the light touch of the magical realism. The characterization of the teenagers is great (in places the book reminded me of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda), and Danny's mother is wonderfully complex. It's the 90s, and she's not ready to contemplate the possibility that Danny might be anything other than 100% straight, but the way she phrases this makes it clear that she's coming from a place of heartbreak (I don't want to say too much, but it makes sense in the book), not shame or hatred.

There's some family stuff throughout the book, and I'm not sure how to feel about the ending—it's what the book builds to (well—one of the things the book builds to), but there are a couple of ways that plotline could have gone within that, and as it is some things still feel a bit unresolved. But...if I had to guess, I suspect that Keenan-Bolger is pulling on real-life experience there, either his or that of people in his circle. And sometimes not everything can be tied up with a bow, especially when you're a teenager with so much of your story left to write.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.