The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead arrives as a visceral exploration of how loss reshapes not just our interior lives but the art we create from the wreckage. This latest offering from the author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and The Last Housewife ventures into new territory—the chaotic, glittering world of rock music—while maintaining Winstead’s signature focus on complicated women navigating impossible circumstances.
A Symphony of Sorrow and Second Chances
At its core, The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead chronicles the implosion and potential resurrection of a struggling California rock band. Hannah Cortland, the group’s combustible frontwoman, hasn’t been the same since her younger sister Ginny—also the band’s manager—drowned in a surfing accident. What begins as a straightforward music industry narrative quickly evolves into something far more complex: a meditation on grief that refuses to behave, sisterhood that transcends death, and the razor’s edge between artistic transformation and self-destruction.
Enter Theo Ford, Manifest Records’ so-called “Fixer,” dispatched to extract one final profitable album from the Saints before cutting them loose. What he finds isn’t a band ready to deliver—it’s three musicians drowning in different stages of grief, with Hannah at the epicenter, performing darker, rawer music that has somehow captured the internet’s fickle attention. The chemistry between Theo and Hannah crackles with the kind of tension that comes from two people recognizing each other’s wounds while trying desperately not to inflict new ones.
The Ghost in the Guitar
Winstead’s most daring narrative choice in The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead is Hannah’s relationship with Ginny’s “ghost.” Rather than presenting this as straightforward magical realism, the author maintains studied ambiguity—is Hannah genuinely experiencing supernatural visitations, or has her grief manifested a psychological coping mechanism? This narrative thread walks a tightrope between poignant and potentially problematic, occasionally tipping toward the latter when Hannah’s conversations with Ginny serve more as exposition delivery than genuine character development.
The ghost-sister dynamic works best in moments of quiet intimacy: Ginny appearing in her unchanged bedroom, making wry observations about Hannah’s romantic entanglements, or offering the kind of sisterly ribbing that only deepens the ache of her absence. It falters when used as a narrative convenience to move plot forward or explain Hannah’s increasingly erratic behavior.
Characters Caught Between Notes
Hannah Cortland emerges as a fascinatingly flawed protagonist—messy, self-sabotaging, and unapologetically angry in ways female characters are rarely permitted to be. Winstead deserves credit for refusing to soften her edges or rush her healing. Hannah’s journey toward sobriety and self-awareness feels earned rather than imposed, though the timeline occasionally strains credulity. Her transformation from dive-bar burnout to Grammy-nominated artist happens with a velocity that serves the plot’s momentum but sometimes sacrifices emotional authenticity.
Theo Ford, by contrast, represents the well-meaning outsider trying to fix what he doesn’t fully understand. His character arc—from ambitious record executive to someone willing to literally swim into dangerous waters—provides compelling counterpoint to Hannah’s chaos. However, his near-saintly patience occasionally veers into “savior” territory, and readers might wish for more acknowledgment of the power dynamics inherent in a manager-artist romance, particularly one where addiction and mental health struggles factor so prominently.
The supporting cast shines in their moments: Kenny’s philosophy-spouting drummer-turned-new-father, Ripper’s contained frustration as he wrestles with being perpetually sidelined, and the high school friends who populate Hannah’s past all feel lived-in and authentic. Dr. Xavier, Hannah’s therapist, serves primarily as a sounding board but offers some of the novel’s most clear-eyed observations about grief and recovery.
The Music of Loss
Where The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead truly excels is in its depiction of how grief alters artistic output. The band’s sonic transformation from breezy California pop-rock to gut-wrenching alternative rock mirrors Hannah’s internal devastation. Winstead effectively conveys the electricity of live performance, the alchemy that happens when a song connects with an audience’s unspoken pain. The descriptions of Hannah onstage—lost in her music, channeling something beyond herself—capture the transcendent potential of performance art.
The novel’s exploration of the music industry proves both well-researched and cynically knowing. From viral TikTok moments to the mercenary calculations of record executives, from Grammy politics to the predatory nature of fame, Winstead captures the machinery that churns artists into content. The inclusion of mock magazine articles, social media posts, and interview transcripts provides texture and immediacy, though these interpolations occasionally disrupt narrative flow.
When the Beat Stumbles
Despite its considerable strengths, The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead stumbles in its pacing. The middle section, chronicling the band’s tour and rising fame, occasionally feels repetitive—another show, another hotel room, another instance of Hannah’s self-destructive behavior. While this repetition serves thematic purpose (demonstrating the cyclical nature of addiction and grief), it tests reader patience.
The climactic beach scene, where Hannah’s spiral reaches its nadir and Theo literally rescues her from the ocean, walks a fine line between powerful metaphor and heavy-handed symbolism. The media circus that follows, complete with paparazzi footage and think-pieces about Hannah’s mental health, feels painfully real but also somewhat rushed in its resolution.
The romance, while compelling in its awkward tenderness and hard-won trust, develops with fits and starts that don’t always feel organic. Theo’s declaration that he would “follow her anywhere” comes after only months of knowing Hannah—a timeline that might work in the heightened reality of rock tours but occasionally strains against the novel’s grounded emotional register.
Themes That Resonate
What elevates the novel beyond standard music-industry fiction is its unflinching examination of complicated grief. Hannah’s refusal to “move on,” her insistence on keeping Ginny present through music and memory and hallucination, challenges the neat stages-of-grief model. The book argues that some losses don’t resolve—they transform us and continue reverberating through our lives in ways both destructive and creative.
The sister relationship at the novel’s heart—complex, competitive, loving, and ultimately irreplaceable—provides its emotional anchor. Winstead captures the particular intimacy between sisters, the shared history that becomes its own language. The revelation about Ginny’s decision to leave the band before her death adds layers of complication that prevent the novel from sliding into simple hagiography.
Equally compelling is the exploration of artistic authenticity versus commercial viability. Can genuine grief be packaged and sold? What happens when your trauma becomes your brand? Hannah’s struggle with these questions—and her eventual Grammy speech addressing them—provides one of the novel’s most satisfying moments.
For Readers Seeking Similar Souls
Fans of The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead should seek out Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & The Six for its similar rock-band dynamics and complex female protagonist. Emma Straub’s Modern Lovers offers a more gentle exploration of musicians grappling with aging and authenticity. For those drawn to the grief elements, Jandy Nelson’s The Sky Is Everywhere provides a YA perspective on sisterly loss, while Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines creative partnership and unprocessed trauma with comparable emotional depth.
The Final Chord
The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead succeeds in its primary ambition: creating a character-driven exploration of grief that refuses easy answers or tidy resolution. The prose carries a propulsive energy that mirrors Hannah’s frenetic performance style, occasionally sacrificing precision for momentum. The romance satisfies without overwhelming the central story of a woman learning to live with loss rather than recover from it.
While the novel’s treatment of mental health and addiction sometimes veers toward romanticization—beautiful, troubled artists creating great work from their pain—it ultimately course-corrects, showing the unglamorous reality of Hannah’s rehabilitation and the hard work of staying sober. The hopeful ending, with its deliberate ambiguity about Hannah and Theo’s future, feels earned without feeling inevitable.
This is a book about the absurdity of being human—loving people we’ll inevitably lose, creating art that cannot last, and choosing hope despite knowing how the story ends. It’s a novel that understands how grief and creativity intertwine, how sometimes our greatest triumphs emerge from our deepest wounds. For all its occasional missteps in pacing and plotting, it delivers an emotionally resonant meditation on loss, love, and the songs we sing to keep the dead alive in our hearts.