Aptly named patriarch King repairs to an island with his wife and daughters to escape an unnamed cataclysm. Even though for a time they welcomed castaway women, the daughters are taught to fear strangers, especially men, who are considered toxic. This insular, hothouse environment, though meant to protect the girls, also sequesters them from being able to adjudge their parents' stringent "exercises" as little more than torture. When King disappears, the daughters' carefully crafted world begins to crumble, and emotions (which the exercises were meant to curb) bubble up. When three related males arrive in King's wake, the sisters, formerly bound in love-hate lockstep, find their sisterhood weakening as each female sorts out events. The slow unfurling of the truth of their lives parallels the daughters' slow awakening to the realities of the world. In Mackintosh's skilled hands, readers encounter this world as if in a fever dream and float on its characters' disparate and shifting points of view. Book clubs may enjoy discussing the dystopian and feminist themes of Mackintosh's exciting debut.--Joan Curbow Copyright 2018 Booklist