Kids are unpredictable. They suddenly love food they once thought disgusting. And sometimes they just might spontaneously combust.

In Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson doesn't dwell on the science of human combustion. Instead, he uses the phenomenon as a clever metaphor for human behavior, especially as it relates to a seemingly privileged family.

Lillian Breaker, the novel's 28-year-old narrator, is anything but privileged. She grows up poor in Tennessee but is determined to seek a better life, so she earns a scholarship to the prestigious Iron Mountain Girls Preparatory School. She develops a fast friendship with Madison Billings, a rich girl whose family owns a chain of department stores. They're classmates for a year, until another student rats on Madison for having cocaine in her room. The Billings family's solution? Bribe Lillian's mother and get Lillian to take the rap.

The young women go their separate ways until years later, when Madison is the wife of a senator who had twins with a previous spouse. The senator is eager to assume higher political office, but the 10-year-old twins are a liability. Whenever something upsets them, they burst into flames, damaging everything around them but leaving their own bodies unharmed. Madison hires Lillian to live on the family estate and act as governess to the two children. What follows is a series of revelations for all parties, as Lillian discovers untapped maternal instincts and Madison and her husband learn more about their family dynamics.

Parts of the novel go on too long, but Nothing to See Here poignantly uses its high concept to make a larger point: Embarrassing behavior often stems from a person's emotions and anxieties. The key is to address them before an easily resolved problem becomes a major conflagration.

Kids are unpredictable. They suddenly love food they once thought disgusting. And sometimes they just might spontaneously combust.

In Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson doesn't dwell on the science of human combustion. Instead, he uses the phenomenon as a clever metaphor for human behavior, especially as it relates to a seemingly privileged family.

Lillian Breaker, the novel's 28-year-old narrator, is anything but privileged. She grows up poor in Tennessee but is determined to seek a better life, so she earns a scholarship to the prestigious Iron Mountain Girls Preparatory School. She develops a fast friendship with Madison Billings, a rich girl whose family owns a chain of department stores. They're classmates for a year, until another student rats on Madison for having cocaine in her room. The Billings family's solution? Bribe Lillian's mother and get Lillian to take the rap.

The young women go their separate ways until years later, when Madison is the wife of a senator who had twins with a previous spouse. The senator is eager to assume higher political office, but the 10-year-old twins are a liability. Whenever something upsets them, they burst into flames, damaging everything around them but leaving their own bodies unharmed. Madison hires Lillian to live on the family estate and act as governess to the two children. What follows is a series of revelations for all parties, as Lillian discovers untapped maternal instincts and Madison and her husband learn more about their family dynamics.

Parts of the novel go on too long, but Nothing to See Here poignantly uses its high concept to make a larger point: Embarrassing behavior often stems from a person's emotions and anxieties. The key is to address them before an easily resolved problem becomes a major conflagration.

Here's another weirdly wonderful Wilson work that should please fans of his New York Times best-selling The Family Fang, Shirley Jackson Award-winning Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, and Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine, an LJ Best Book. Once a scholarship student at a prestigious boarding school, Lillian has lost touch with rich, classy roomate Madison. Then Madison writes to ask if Lillian can serve as caretaker for her two new stepchildren—delightful creatures, no doubt, but they do have a tendency to burst into flames when they get upset. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

As teenagers, wealthy Madison and scholarship student Lillian became unlikely friends at a prestigious boarding school, until Lillian was expelled for something Madison did. Now that they're in their late 20s, Madison is married to a senator, and she invites Lillian—who spends her days working at a grocery store and smoking pot in her mother's attic—to their estate to care for her new stepchildren…who are prone to literally bursting into flames when upset. The novel is a love letter to the weirdness and difficulties of children and of parenting, with or without spontaneous human combustion. The fire is a lovely and flexible metaphor for childhood—the pain, joy, and mania of it—as vital, beautiful, and terrifying as kids themselves can be. Lillian tells the story in an easy, engaging voice, cynical and funny without being caustic. Like the author's The Family Fang, this is another story of a family that is as delightfully bizarre as it is heartfelt and true. VERDICT Wilson further cements himself as a chronicler of peculiar families while reminding us that, then again, aren't they all? [See Prepub Alert, 5/5/19.]—Katy Hershberger, School Library Journal

Wilson (Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine) turns a bizarre premise into a beguiling novel about unexpected motherhood. When aimless, low-achieving 28-year-old Lillian Breaker receives a mysterious invitation from Madison Roberts, her former roommate at a prestigious high school, longtime correspondent, and now wife to a senator, she does not hesitate to travel to Franklin, Tenn. Madison offers her a job as a very discreet governess for the senator's twin children from a prior marriage. Ten-year-olds Bessie and Roland sometimes burst into flames, and Madison is desperate to avoid a scandal upsetting the senator's chances of becoming secretary of state. Lillian accepts and, with begrudging help from Carl, the senator's shadowy right-hand man, guides the children through coping mechanisms in the guest house on the family's lavish estate while Madison and Senator Roberts remain icy toward them. Their progress is upended, though, when the senator's prospects rapidly change and Lillian has to decide where her loyalties are. Lillian's deadpan observations zip from funny to heartbreaking while her hesitancy and messy love satisfyingly contrasts with Madison's raw drive for power and tightly controlled affection. Wilson captures the wrenching emotions of caring for children in this exceptional, and exceptionally hilarious, novel. Agent: Julie Barer, the Book Group. (Nov.)