The Golden Boy: A Novel

by Patricia Finn

An extraordinary and deeply satisfying story about love, betrayal, mercy, and second chances—for readers of Elizabeth Strout and Ann Napolitano

When Stafford Hopkins loses his high-profile job in network television, his American colleagues rejoice. Canadian-born, his disdain for the industry has outrun his success, and few mourn his departure. His mercurial American wife in tow, he retreats to their luxury estate on Maui where he does what he has always done best―he rewrites the past. But a year into their exile, Stafford’s defenses are crumbling, and when a letter arrives with a request from the dead to do something for the living, he is summoned home to a farm, a lake, a prison, and a dance hall where the spirit of a boy named Bobby Shepherd is waiting for him.

“Patricia Finn has constructed something miraculous—an immersive, profoundly moving story about friendship, marriage, betrayal, and redemption that spans across generations and oceans. She writes with a philosopher’s deep wisdom, and a screenwriter’s talent for satisfyingly messy characters and wholly gripping plots. Combine all of that with the fact that The Golden Boy is also very, very funny, and what you’ve got is a novel that’s about as perfect as they come.” —Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Family Drama, Book Club, Contemporary, Family

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 10, 2026

Reviews

[Tara Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is March 2026 and the official release of “The Golden Boy” is here! I was able to read an advanced copy last year and it was one of my top books of the year. I placed my preorder months ago and picked up my copy on Tuesday, and I couldn’t wait before digging right back in. And this book held up just beautifully on my reread, possibly even better than the first time.

In a style similar to Emily St. John Mandel, this book is not told linearly. We get both the current day plot of Stafford finding out he is a guardian to four children, and the childhood of Stafford wherein he grows up with the grandfather of those said children. I truly think this is a book best gone into without expectations. Let yourself be pulled along the ride, let the story unfold itself. There are so many small details that build up throughout the story: the water mentions, the morality debates, the deep love Stafford still holds for Bobby. This isn’t a simple story of picking up some children. It is a deep and tragic tale told over many years.

And I do mean tragic, because this book brought me to tears multiple times. Perhaps some of that is the connection I feel to the book, but the writing is truly so excellent that it is so easy to get lost in it. That final letter? Gut wrenching. The dialogue in this book is also so incredibly unique. I affirm what I said in my previous review, but you can really see Patricia Finn’s history in TV through the dialogue. Lots of it (but not all) is very script like, with back and forth dialogue only and minimal descriptors. I found all of these scenes to be a succinct way of showing characterization.

This is not a book about a rich guy turning his life around. This is not a book about adoption. This is a complex web of life, and Patricia Finn strings it all together so beautifully. I’m so glad to have this on my shelf and I can’t wait to share it with more people I know. I was also able to get my local library to acquire a copy, so hopefully more of my community will be seeing it too. I would not be surprised at all if this book makes it into some award long lists, I think it certainly deserves it. 💛

August 2025 ARC review: It is not often that I am less than a hundred pages into a book, and so enthralled by the writing that I check to see if the author has more books for me to read. I was shocked to learn that this was Patricia Finn’s debut into the fiction world, and just know that I will be first in line to get this book in physical copy and to read anything else written by the author. This book was a journey, a complex world of characters and family and history. I cried, I gasped, I had the full reading experience including staying up late to read because I couldn’t stop thinking about this book. The prose is beautiful, with wonderful descriptions. The dialogue is unlike most, but when I connected it to the way you would read dialogue for TV it all made sense. In some books ongoing exposition and information about the past can feel mundane, but not here. As we travel through the events of the current day, we also learn about the past and I’m left wanting more from both. If I could give this 6 stars I would. Thank you so so much to the publisher for the e-arc, I truly feel changed by this book and can’t wait to share it with everyone.

[Shelby · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this book was very intriguing. A second chance story where a man gets assigned legal guardianship of 4 children he doesn’t know? Sign me up. However, there was a whole lot of fluff before making it to any of that. You don’t even meet the children until 80% i to the book. I enjoyed the end with Stafford and Agnes interacting with the kids, so I wish we’d met them sooner. Unfortunately I found most of the story pretty boring. The two main characters were unlikable until the end. I kept reading because I was hoping it would be interesting seeing these two older people raising young kids, but if I knew there wouldn’t be much of that I probably would have DNFed. I just think the description of the book was misleading.

**ARC review. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read it early.

[Seawitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up.

I’m a sucker for family sagas and I did like a lot about this one that meanders all the way from small town Canada to LA to Hawaii and back to Canada again.

There is childhood trauma (little t and big T) involved for most of the characters and the trauma underlies much of the “plot” and the behaviors of the characters.

Sometimes the story’s meandering is a bit distracting especially when the author gets wrapped up in lengthy descriptions about weather and such.

At times the meandering gets the reader to wondering where is this all going? There is an underlying connection/structure to ancient philosophy and personal histories repeat themselves. It feels as if the author has tossed out a jigsaw puzzle onto a table and then manages to put the puzzle pieces back together first slowly and then suddenly. The ending feels just a bit quick and too neatly fit and highly improbable. Also, confusing? What exactly was the lineage of this family? I wanted to see it all mapped out somewhere but wondered if it was deliberately convoluted.

All that said, I was rooting for everyone in the story. I loved the joke where Stafford corrects Agnes’s grammar and she reminds him she has a gun and they both laugh. 😊

(And I was happy about the swimming lessons and time in the water for the kids. Water is so healing…)

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Ashlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is why I wish Goodreads had ½ stars. 2.5. Good writing style so I’ll round up.

Well. This was a book. The author is talented. This book really did have great writing style. It just was not my kind of book. I feel like every new character, or side character, or even rando walking by, was given a huge detailed description of just how ugly they were. Or how people didn’t like them. Or all the negatives about them. It was weird.

The narrator was listed as Jason Culp. I have to say, this narrator was very talented. He had a very specific style of reading and a very distinctive voice. In looking over his resume, I can 100% see why he was selected for a number of other books. But not this one. I don’t think this was the right fit for his voice.

I really wanted to love the banter in this book. I kept reading about there being banter and humor. However, it didn’t always feel like fun banter. Sometimes it felt like resentment or angry bitterness. It made it impossible to like any of the characters.

Not a win for me. However, I always love a new book and to read/listen to something new. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC, it is always an adventure.

[Susan Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m going with 4 stars, since it definitely kept me reading & the story held my interest. But I have a hard time buying that ending with the much improved characters of Stafford & Agnes. Plus, I’ll be honest, in today’s world, folks having this much money pisses me off.

[Mary Lins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put down “The Golden Boy” by Patricia Finn, and it will certainly land on my 2026 Top Ten list! Prepare to laugh, cry, and “laugh-cry” at this captivating family “dramady”.

Stafford and Agnes are a long-married, rich, privileged, middle-aged couple living in luxury on Maui. HOWEVER, they aren’t particularly happy. They know that they were terrible parents to their now estranged daughter, Callie, though they are at odds on how to repair the relationship. Their own relationship is fractious; both harbor dark secrets from their childhoods.

A letter arrives that could upend their lives and provide a “second chance” for them both…if they decide to take a leap.

Finn’s dialogue is pitch perfect and delightful, an absolute high point of this wonderful novel.

(Richard Russo, one of my all-time favorite writers, provided a blurb for this book, and while I don’t always trust “celebrity” blurbs, his was spot on!)

[Craig Elliott Jr · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was fine, but it took forever to get to the children and then when we got there, about 10 years done in as many pages. Very rushed at the end. Also, did I miss it, what did Stafford and Agnes do to their daughter Callie? It was never explained. I'm guessing work took over Stafford's life and Agnes was being the grand dame. Every time I thought we were going to get to the children, Bobby was brought up or it went in a very different direction. It's a debut after all and feels it.

[Meems · Rating 1 out of 5]

I shouldn't say I "finished" the book. It's more correct to say "I am finished" with the book. I had to wait for a long time for it to become available through the library and even then, I got a skip-the-line copy that had to be returned in 7 days. It started off fine, but I was confused by the style of the dialogue, particulary between Stafford and Agnes. I figured it was meant to convey their increasing dissatisfaction with each other, yadda yadda. I made it perhaps halfway through the book and returned it early in great disgust. Finn is a competent story teller, but the dialogue grew more and more painful, to the point where I dreaded the moments the text moved from descriptive to the moments where people talked to each other. I simply couldn't abide it.

Of course, now it's killing about the deep, dark secret embedded somewhere in the book that I will never know.

I'll manage.

[Chapters & Chives · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm really enjoying the increased representation of Canadian cities and small towns in literature! Keep these coming! It's so nice to recognize place names and have lived where the characters are and experienced the same landmarks they do.

I personally found the plot of this book too slow. The first half of it focuses on Stafford's ego - all his successes, education, career, etc. It takes too long to reach any inciting incident or development of any other characters. This focus on Stafford's elitism and success made him such an unlikeable character to me. I know this is partly the point of the novel because he experiences a change in character when he has to take care of four new children, but I still couldn't come to like him even in the end.

Thank you so much to HarperCollins and HarperAudio for the gifted ALC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

[Nat :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about how one moment from your past can quietly define your entire life and the way guilt seeps into your marriage, your identity, and the stories you tell yourself about who you are and what you deserve.

4.5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What I loved most about The Golden Boy is how deceptively simple it feels on the surface. It reads quickly, almost effortlessly, but underneath that ease is a really sharp, emotionally intelligent look at memory, regret, and the way we assign meaning to our own lives. This isn’t a book that hits you over the head with its themes, it lets them fester slowly, through conversation, through what’s left unsaid, through the quiet tension of everyday life.

And you can absolutely feel Patricia Finn’s background as a screenwriter in the best way. She writes like someone who thinks in scenes, not paragraphs. The story is incredibly dialogue-driven and the conversations carry the emotional weight instead of long internal monologues. Everything feels super clean and visual. You can almost see the pacing, the pauses, the way characters move around each other. What really stood out to me is how much she relies on subtext. Characters aren’t constantly explaining themselves; they reveal who they are through what they avoid, deflect, or leave unsaid. It makes the whole book feel very immediate and bingeable, like something that could be adapted tomorrow with almost no changes to the script.

On the surface, this is a story about friendship, betrayal, and memory. But underneath, it’s really about the danger of building your identity around one mistake. Stafford has quietly shaped his entire adult life around this belief that he’s responsible for what happened to his best friend from childhood and that one moment from his youth defines who he is as a person. And the longer he carries that story, the more it seeps into everything else: his marriage, his sense of self, the way he moves through the world.

What makes the ending land so well is that it doesn’t go big, it goes incredibly honest. There’s no dramatic unraveling, no clean moral resolution, no moment where everything is neatly explained or forgiven. Instead, it leans into something much more real: acceptance without full absolution. Stafford doesn’t get to undo the past, and he doesn’t get a clear answer that he wasn’t responsible. But something shifts in how he understands his role, how much weight he assigns to that moment, and whether he allows himself to keep moving forward.

And that felt incredibly true to life. Because most of the time, you don’t get closure, you just gain perspective. Not “you did nothing wrong,” but something quieter and more complicated: that wasn’t the whole story.

Overall, this felt like one of those books that sneaks up on you. It’s not trying to be sweeping or devastating, but it’s thoughtful, grounded, and emotionally precise in a way that really worked for me.

Excited to see what Finn has cookin up next! 👀

[Kali Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as an ARC. Thank you to Book Huddle and Harper Collins for providing it.

I'm still not 100% sure what to make of this book. Set primarily in Maui with an intermission in Kingston Ontario, the story focuses on Stafford Hopkins, a former big shot tv executive and his wife Agnes. The novel alternates between focusing on Stafford's childhood and his close friendship with a neighbour Bobby Shepherd and Stafford's current life in his 50s.

Like most rich white men, Stafford spends the majority of the book being a cold, arrogant, and unlikable character though his background lends him some sympathy and I warmed up to him somewhat by the end. Agnes was definitely the more sympathetic character but even she had her moments where she was hard to like.

The Golden Boy is a contemplative read about humanity, life, and the choices we make when faced with adversity. It is an enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys literary fiction and a thought provoking story.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

« You will never do anything in this world without courage. »

[Soon Perez · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75 🌟

I couldn't really get into it. Always because I expected more. It had its few good moments. Alot of tragic moments.

🧊✨️🏝🇨🇦

-Libby 🎧

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, rounding up to 4. I had some trouble with this one. A lot of jumping around in the story. But the ending redeemed it. Overall though a good read

[Corinne · Rating 3 out of 5]

31/2🌟

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t really good. I’d say for about the first 70% of the book I was wondering, Where is this story going? The whole hype for the book of Stafford becoming guardian to 4 kids…they were introduced very late in the story. I’m sure if the premise of the book was described differently, my expectations would also be different. Again, not bad/not good.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really just liked this book for the depictions of Maui and the philosophical statements/references in each chapter. I didn’t really care for Agnes and Stafford eventually grew on me.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn 🌺🌺.5

Hmm. This book had potential, but I was bored. 🫣 The main characters are an uber wealthy television executive and his supportive wife. They each have baggage from their traumatic childhoods, but now their lives are full of fame and money, parties and red carpets, homes all over the world, golf club memberships, and an extravagant retirement estate on Maui. This book isn’t really about all of that, though. It’s about dealing with grief, guilt, and loss. It does have its touching moments, and I chuckled at the dialog between the married, sexagenarian couple. I just could not feel connected to their lives of excess.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Cardinal for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book. You can find it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on Tuesday, March 10, 2026.

“It was eight o’clock in the morning, and the only thing worse than living in paradise was oversleeping in it.”
— Patricia Finn, The Golden Boy

[Michael Busse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled with this one. For the first section of the book the only real conflict is Stafford Hopkins bickering with his wife, and the story doesn’t gain any momentum until a tragedy sends him back to his hometown in Canada (a handful of orphans are left in his care). The most interesting thread is his childhood friendship with Bobby Shepherd, a boy who contrasts sharply with Stafford in family, reputation, and appearance. Unfortunately the writing often feels distant, almost like a historical summary or newspaper report rather than lived-in scenes, which makes it hard to connect emotionally. There are hints of deeper ideas about virtue and Aristotle, but the novel never really digs into them.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I get that this book won’t be for everyone but I really liked it. Grew from a 4 to a 5 for me. Quirky, warm, sad, funny. I was so drawn in. I loved how not obvious or cliche the plot or characters or any of it was.

[M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit, I was probably a bit irritated by the characters for the first 100 pages 😅 and I thought about DNF-ing, but it's not really my style. I hate doing that because I have been pleasantly surprised in the past. I still didn't feel the need to 4 or 5 star the book, but please do not take that as a bad sign not to read it. It was so much better learning about the characters in more depth and what shaped them. It's a family saga of love, loss, regret, and maybe even redemption.
I could see this book doing really well.

I am grateful to Goodreads and Grandcentral Publishing for this ARC copy

[Beansbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

An endearing read

What more can I say other than this book was genuinely lovely to read and Stafford and Agnes were both complicated dynamic souls who had certainly found their match in the other.
Their relationship and marriage and the meteoric rise of Staffords career in the film industry was an unexpected financial windfall that would turn two very humble people who came from even more humbler beginnings and would give them financial freedom from all that their parents, guardians and young adulthood had never experienced before. They’d meet at the bar where Stafford worked to pay for his college education which he was brilliantly successful with and she was visiting from a near by town a group of young people that hadn’t been kind to her and left her at the end of the night. Stafford married her 6 weeks later much to his mothers chagrin and friends who warned him of moving too fast. They’d marry despite the lack of support and eventually moved out of Canada into L.A. where their lives would change dramatically.
After giving birth to a son, who would be born with massive deformities and an unformed brain they would lose him soon after entering the world and it was such a tragic and irreparable loss the trauma would remain between them for years to come. They went on to have another child, their daughter Callie, whose birth was horrific for Agnes and the aftermath to recuperate was slow and painful compounded with a colicky baby who grew into an adorable little girl which both parents would spoil in excess and then as the money begins piling up, professional help is hired in to nanny the baby, Callie, to cook, clean, garden and chauffeur. She was a kid raised by the hired help while her parents fulfilled social engagements with peers of their financial status and the family will suffer estrangement because of it. Callie reminds her father of his older brother, who was always in trouble or jail and an alcoholic with no steady income or responsibility. Agnes makes excuses and bails her out of her trouble and this creates an obvious rift between them and their marriage.
After retiring to Maui, to be away from the L.A. scene and find some comfort and peace from that lifestyle, Stafford is thrilled while Agnes finds herself wanting to return to their home in L.A. and the gatherings they attended. After a few years on Maui, however, she begins to find her rhythm and remains busy at the club with her tennis lessons, playing golf exceptionally well and socializing with a small group of women with whom money is their only commonality. While Stafford and Agnes bicker and at times their distance between them may seem vast there’s also a deep and intimate connection between them that they both respect and acknowledge. They’ve both had tragic events in their pasts and the losses that have left their marks and scars they carry with them that can create the divide and misery within them and project it to the other yet somehow they always come back to each other aware of their mistakes, bad behavior and verbal assault giving and recieving forgiveness every time. It’s an unconventional marriage but it’s theirs and for them it does work.
When they receive a letter informing Stafford he is now the guardian of 4 children from Donny Shephard, who is his childhood best friend’s son, or perhaps his real ancestral history will be revealed later in the book when a shocking confession is made to the caretaker of the church in the town from which Bobby and Stafford grew up in. Bobby Shephard and Stafford lived next door to one another, both were late in life babies whose parents were far older than their peers and the boys were closer than brothers. Why Donny, whom Stafford hasn’t ever had a discussion with about being the guardian of his four children in event of an accident of both he and his wife, which would happen on their way home from the grocery store on New Years Eve, was unfathomable to Stafford. He and Agnes hadn’t even known how to be children when they were young, didn’t have parents to seek advice or guidance from and they certainly missed their chance and calling with their estranged adult daughter, Callie, who was living proof the two of them had no idea or any success in raising children. It was immediately obvious to Stafford he would travel to his hometown to meet the lawyer of the kids, set up a hefty trust fund and make some other arrangements for their guardianship as he wasn’t equipped to be raising 4 kids aged 15 to 3 at 58 years old. It was crazy and unrealistic to his mind. When he arrives at the meeting at the lawyers he will be in for a rude awakening and shocked into a state that will be the precursor of what’s to come. Sometimes the most unexpected, unwelcome moments will be the most positive and life changing factors that just may save your life your marriage and give you the second chance you never knew you needed.
Such a beautiful story full of emotion and the interrelationships between a marriage&family.

[Bell Of The Books · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Golden Boy

"With The Golden Boy, Patricia Finn has constructed something miraculous"...

"hilarious and heartbreaking"...

“A novel that will satisfy with its engaging storytelling, excellent pacing, and clever writing"...

"The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn is a deeply funny and tender novel"...


With reviews like that, along with Barnes and Noble touting it as the next best novel, I began this book.

Four hours, ten chapters in, I was not just annoyed with those reviews but lost and overwhelmed by the constant timeline shifting, as every other moment became a memory we were forced to enter into.
Why?!
Manny people dislike musicals, because they hate how the characters break into song every other minute, that's how the constant "memories and moments from the past" kept popping in.

So much unnecessary time wasted.

I got 50% in, continuing to give it more time to "improve", I grew tired of waiting.

Who does Finn know to pay off to get that many raving reviews??

Don't waste as much time as I did, you'll get nothing but annoyed waiting for something, ANYTHING, to make you care about this story, let alone find one "funny", "hilarious" or even slightly "heart warming" moment.

[TJ Macaluso · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a tool I’ve noticed different authors use in multiple books I’ve read over the past few years, where the main character is attached to a lot of negativity throughout much of the story. At the novel’s conclusion, however, the last thing we see the protagonist do (after struggling through so much) is laugh. Idk what it is but this scratches an itch that this lil Italian never realized he had and you best believe I will be stealing said tool for my own novel one day.

[Karen Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. This book is about dysfunction with a capital D! If you enjoy reading hundreds of pages of dysfunction with Aristotle references built in- it would be a 5 for you! I kept reading to find the redemption to this story…. Yes it finally came but what a depressing journey it was. I wanted to read more about the ending than the long road to it. The writing was good and the story line was ok but it just didn’t hit the spot for me. After a while the Aristotle quotes and meanings got tiresome to read.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stafford Hopkins has made a fortune in Hollywood and he and his wife Agnes have just retired to a luxury estate on Maui. Stafford grew up on a hardscrabble farm in Canada and he and Agnes have multiple homes and a high flying lifestyle. They also have a daughter they are estranged from and ghosts from the past that won't go away. When Stafford gets word that the four grandchildren of his boyhood friend have been orphaned and left in his care, he goes back to Canada intent on providing financially for them and getting back to Maui ASAP. This isn't quite how things work out. This is the author's first novel and it has its problems, but its a good read and Finn does a wonderful job of skewering the foibles of the newly rich and laying bare the phoniness of their lives.

[Tim Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully written book chronically the lives of a retired well-to-do married couple seemingly on their last nerve. But when the camera pulls back and we see how events in their lives have effected them, all while on the way to yet another massive change, we see how love and support help us all change in marvelous ways.

[Carol Cambra Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure why I liked this book.
It could be that on Audible the characters came alive in their own strangely unique way.
I just loved the story of how grief, trauma and hardship are never solved by excess, wealth and leisure.
Life truly needs meaningful relationships, purpose and love to make it worthwhile.
Stafford and Agnes will be staying in my mind for a long time.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Jonijean · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8. I don’t think I would have finished this book except for all the hype/good press. The writing was good but I could not connect to the characters for the vast majority of the book. (It reminds me of the Correspondent in that way—a book I disliked most of the time I was reading it but am glad to have read.). I’m not sure I recommend the audiobook—hearing the marital dialogue was painful most of the time but I’m not sure that was the narrator’s fault.