Sunshine, Sad Songs, and Celebrity Chaos: Reviewing The Future Saints

The Future Saints follows Hannah, a rising musician whose band is suddenly navigating fame while quietly unraveling after the death of her sister and manager, Ginny. As industry pressure mounts, a pragmatic, newbie-doobie manager named Theo Ford steps in, hoping he can steer the band away from disaster. Meanwhile, Hannah struggles to move forward, haunted by the memory, and presence, of the sister she lost. Set among celebrity parties, tour chaos, and sun-drenched California scenes, the novel traces how grief, ambition, and fame collide.

At the start of The Future Saints, Hannah performs a mournful song about lost love. With only a few blurbs to go on, it’s easy to assume she’s singing about a dead boyfriend, perhaps one who also happened to manage the band. That would have been perfectly serviceable. Instead, we learn the subject of the song is her sister, Ginny, the band’s former manager. Oooooooh! It’s a more interesting emotional hook.

Enter Theo Ford, the only adult in the room at any given time, who essentially surveys the band’s dysfunction and thinks: What a shit show. I can fix them. From there, he attempts exactly that.

Even after finishing the book, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it. The Future Saints is a strange blend of moments that feel immersive and cinematic alongside others that read like fan fiction written during a particularly enthusiastic AP English workshop.

When the book works, it really works.

The standout example is Hannah’s night at the Saturday Night Live afterparty. The Future Saints attend after being the musical guest on the show that evening. The scene operates on several levels at once: cast members decompressing after the show, alcohol blurring the line between bonding and hazing, Theo navigating unethical pressure from his boss, and celebrities revealing flashes of vulnerability beneath their polish. The author manages something difficult here, taking a legendary, star-studded event and making it feel intimate.

A similar effect happens during the Las Vegas pool party, where the glossy chaos of fame feels vivid rather than performative. Here, Hannah is the perfect embodiment of the drunk, entertaining friend. Many of us have had a chaotic night out while under the influence and we look back on those nights fondly. This scene gave me all of those feels. Also, I appreciated that it demonstrated the new complicated layer of being a young person and doing foolish things. Everyone has their phone out. Everyone records. A lot of this book captures the way that celebrities become famous and relevant in the Gen Z/Gen Alpha culture-sphere.

Early on, the book gave me pause. The ghost of Hannah’s dead sister appears in the first chapter, which initially felt like a worrying creative choice. Fortunately, the novel eventually reframes this device. Ginny isn’t actually a ghost but a manifestation of Hannah’s unresolved trauma, a projection of grief she refuses to release. As metaphors for mourning go, this one is surprisingly effective.

Unfortunately, those moments of emotional clarity are often offset by characters who feel far less developed.

Take Kenny Lovins, the band’s drummer. His defining trait is that he’s “spiritual.” That spirituality is rendered almost entirely through references to crystals and breathing exercises, leaving him with the emotional depth of a Cartoon Network side character. The character never grows beyond this caricature, which makes him feel less like a person.

The central romance between Hannah and Theo Ford is similarly undercooked. Their love story feels less like something that unfolds organically and more like something the plot simply requires. Theo himself borders on saintly, an endlessly patient nice guy whose only flaw appears to be occasionally prioritizing the steady paycheck that comes with his job.

Hannah, meanwhile, is largely defined by reputation rather than action. We’re told repeatedly that she’s a transcendent guitarist whose music makes people feel things, but those claims arrive mostly through anonymous fans and online commentary. The novel insists on her talent more than it demonstrates it.

I wish, so very much, that Ashley Winstead would trust her readers to fill in the gaps themselves. So often, she’ll write a clear and evocative scene only to break down the meaning of it to us right after. This isn’t a line from the book, but think: The tears rolled down her face, her voice was guttural…she was heartbroken. [WE KNOW!!]

One of the book’s most satisfying moments comes when a journalist bluntly calls Hannah out for behaving as if she’s the only person in the world who has experienced grief. It’s a brief but refreshing moment of self-awareness.

Her parents, unfortunately, remain frustratingly vague. They’re not abusive or neglectful, just inexplicably mean. Late in the story, they reveal that Ginny had planned to leave the band and attend medical school, a revelation that sends Hannah into a spiral culminating in a near-suicide attempt. It’s a moment that should land with devastating emotional force, but the scene feels more melodramatic than tragic. What’s the big deal? And it’s big enough to try and kill yourself over? I don’t know.

Ultimately, The Future Saints lands somewhere between young adult fiction and glossy fan fiction, with clear echoes of Daisy Jones & The Six. That comparison isn’t an insult. Both genres can be enormously entertaining.

The difference is that the characters in Daisy Jones & The Six feel unmistakably adult. They make bad decisions, hurt each other, spiral through addiction and abandonment, and struggle with their flaws in ways that feel messy but authentic.

The struggles in The Future Saints, by contrast, often feel like a younger writer’s imagined version of grief and addiction: dramatic, earnest, but not always shaped by the messiness of lived experience.

The one exception is Theo Ford. His career motivations feel believable, and his central dilemma, whether to appease his boss to advance his career or protect the integrity of the artists he manages, creates the book’s most compelling tension.

In the end, The Future Saints is best enjoyed as a breezy, California-soaked music industry drama. It’s immersive, occasionally insightful, and undeniably readable. Just don’t expect every emotional note to land in perfect harmony.